The founder of Adaptive Insights, acquired by Workday, argues that culture beats strategy every time. After six acquisitions and over a hundred M&A deals, he's seen cultural alignment determine whether mergers work. Adaptive Insights' customer-focused, transparent culture matched Workday's, which made integration succeed.
Chapters
We all understand the importance of culture. There used to be an expression that culture trumps strategy. So I now— I'm told by my team it may not always be politically correct. So— but culture certainly is more important, is more important than strategy. I think Peter Drucker used to say culture Culture eats strategy for breakfast. And culture is what you want, it's the way you want your team, your organization to behave in certain circumstances. One of the things, and I think this is particularly true when we think about M&A, culture is probably the most important factor in determining whether M&A is successful. I think I've been acquired now 6 times, 4 as a public company. I think on the buy side, I've been involved in probably more than 100 transactions. And if there's one constant in terms of the deals that worked versus the ones that didn't work, it really is about culture. So at Adaptive Insights, our culture was very much customer success-oriented, team-oriented. We value transparency. We value accountability, and the Workday culture is very much aligned. And I think in the 6 months we've operated together, we found that that provides a strong foundation for the way we can operate those— our 2 businesses together. So I think, I think your responsibility as leaders— culture is one of the most important things that you do.