How to Pivot to an M&A Integration Career

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Interviews and invitations to events as we build the greatest community of forward thinking M and A practitioners. Again, that's mascience.com today I'm here with John Murata, Chief Operating Officer at M and A Science. John's career in M and a spans over 17 years, where he started as a computer science engineer, wound up in M and A Integration, then continued that career path where he most recently was head of M and A Integration for Ellie Mae that got acquired for $11 billion by Intercontinental Exchange where he helped lead that integration and then shortly after joined M and A Science as our Chief Operating Officer. Today we're going to talk about how to pivot to an M and A integration career. How are you doing John?

Doing good. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. Can we kick things off with your background? I know you've recently joined as our Chief Operating Officer, but let's get a rundown on what your M and A career looks like.

It probably began 17 years ago with my very first project as a consultant. The project started with a very basic technical integration work, but at the time the vendor that we were integrating with, they actually acquired product to complement the core ERP system that they had. And so in the middle of that we began not only just the standard consulting work, but then we began to expand our services to actually do integration of that product in real time with the current client. So that's where it all started. Our probably not the best start Considering that trying to do two things at once is probably not the best way to run a project. But it allowed me to look at not only how you integrate a company into the parent, but also how do you take it to market as well. So it kind of gave me this huge breadth and span. Now that I look back at it, it was probably the best of all worlds, but probably not at the beginning of my career, probably towards the middle of my career. It would have been a better exercise at that time. Now, many years later, I've spent a lot of time on post close activities. So a lot of integration projects that I've worked on, I've been on the pre close side every once in a while, but mostly towards diligence and looking at companies that we should consider for the company I work for, but never truly involved in all the activities to actually close. Which is okay by me because even if we're involved in integration and part of integration planning, we're still involved in much of the detail. And that for me is what I really enjoy, which is all the effort that we do post close because there's a lot of moving parts and that helps me find ways to create value for the company, not only from the investment rationale, but just when you're working with people and having a people centric focus approach. There is so much that we do to contribute back in terms of overall value to the company.

Integrations were all the values created.

Totally agree.

So you've had this background, you've worked across several organizations, worked at a variety of different capacity when it comes to to integrating companies, both as an external consultant and then as an in house advisor. And you also have a unique background, came up through more of an engineering career track and then shifted into working in M and A.

That's right, yeah. My undergraduate degree is actually in computer science, so I went to school on the east coast, then I did graduate school out here in the Midwest in the Chicago area. And after graduate school I thought, wow, I'm in technology field, I definitely need to spend some time out in Silicon Valley.

So.

So that's where I am now and I'm enjoying it, I'm enjoying the weather. It's been a fantastic ride in Silicon Valley. So it'll probably be here for a little while, me and my family.

Well, let's get into it. What are some steps someone can start making to transition to an integration leader?

I like that question. You tend to see in the market when you talk to other practitioners that they don't jump right out of school and become an integration leader. There's a path that they take that is in parallel to become integration lead. So for example, you'll have folks in the HR field. I meet a lot of them who are just passionate about the change management component of integration. And that's really critical, especially as we look at people centricity as a core value that we deliver at post close. We also have folks in finance who spend time working on an acquisition, doing work pre close, and then they're also very much passionate about making sure that the investment rationale flows all the way through in terms of financial synergies as well as in financial rationale. So we find lots of those types of practitioners who come into the field. And myself as a perfect example, I actually came from the technical side where I was doing a lot of technical due diligence and that allowed me to flow into an integration lead. One of the triggering points, if you want to call it that, was I actually had a manager who said during one of my annual reviews, he said, said, wow, John, you're really adept at doing all the technical due diligence and I'm finding that you actually have pretty good people skills. So why don't we start to harness that? And so for the next round of monthly check ins with him, he would tell me, here's what you're doing well in terms of managing people. And he said, why don't we tweak this, tweak that. And over time, having a mentor like that allowed me to round out the people side of my skills along with the technical skills. And that then also allowed me to propel myself into, you know, integration lead.

Are there certain roles that you find are the easiest to transition from to integration leader?

Let me change that question a little bit. Is there a title that tends to be an easier transition? Typically, if you have people responsibility as well as budgetary responsibility, that tends to be an easier migration into an integration lead role. The reason is in integration we have to run budgets in many ways. We borrow other people's time, but we also have a budget we have to stick to. So if you already have that skillset, it's an easier transition in obviously there's a people component and we are managing multiple work streams. We are working with not only our own in house team as the parent company, but we're also working with the acquired company people. So really having a good EQ will help you make sure that all those moving parts move together well. And in some cases, I will admit there are financial benefits to making sure that we do things well and those financial components and having a good acumen on finance will also assist in helping you deliver much more value through the post merger integration work.

It sounds like the key skill areas you need to have are people skills, budgeting, slash finance, and then project management. What do you think are the attributes of a good integration leader?

The top three that I would pick is one, being very organized because you are working with lots of work streams and you are juggling a lot, and I mean a lot of responsibility. The second skill that I would recommend having is somebody who is a great listener and being in the imo, the Integration Management office. It's good to have a solid, strong framework, but also knowing when to listen to people so that if the framework doesn't apply, you're able to adjust where needed, be flexible, and then in many cases understand where they're coming from as well. An IMO provides overall governance, but IMOs aren't perfect and neither are frameworks. So having that great listening ear will help you be better at making your IMO better. The next round. And then finally, the last skill that I would highly recommend is having a very good critical thinking mind, which is how to look at problems, find the key critical items that are causing that problem or issue, and then using those same very same investigative skills to find find solutions around it. I can't tell you how many times I've actually been in steering committee meetings where my steering committee says, john, come to me with every problem you have. Great, I'll do that. And then when I come to them with problems, the next thing they ask is what's the solution? Like, oh, I didn't think that. So what they really want when you're working with executives in the steering committee is bring them everything that could be stalling or halting your integration, but also come up with good ways that they can help you provide an answer. They can provide the support that you need, but come to them with those answers already defined so they can pick and choose. And that's really important because again, if you're having to go to a steering committee, just give them the issue, then they tell you to go back and figure out solutions. That's typically a couple of weeks lost. And you want to be flexible, you want to be fluid, you want to be predictive in many ways so that you have the ability to present those issues, present the possible solutions, and then have them make quick decisions to keep moving the integration forward quickly.

These are great key traits are being organized, being a great listener, critical thinking, or Think of as problem solving. How important is it for corp dev to have a dedicated integration leader?

So depending on the size, and I apologize for giving you a consulting answer, which is it depends, but it truly does. If you're for example a series D startup, several hundred million in funding, you've just spun up your corporate development team, you're looking at being acquisitive. That is still fairly early in the game. So having a dedicated IMO or integration leader probably doesn't make the best sense because you haven't acquired anything yet. Now if you plan to be acquisitive, meaning two or three a year, then certainly corporate development needs to consider having an integration leader to make sure you get the value out of those acquisitions. Now if you're a mid cap company, let's say PE backed and you are looking again to be acquisitive as well, definitely start those conversations with an integration leader very early. The point being you want that person ingrained in the culture of the company. And by the way, it doesn't mean you have to find somebody externally to be this integration leader. You could find somebody internally and probably that's the fastest path, which is find somebody on the inside because they have a network, they have a culture, a cultural understanding of the company, they certainly have credibility with other leaders in the company and that helps accelerate what the IMO means in the organization. So having that person come in, having them be part of diligence, not huge part, but certainly one important part which is making sure that they are aware of the investment rationale. All those motions make great advancements in helping create much more value for that.

Integration afterwards basically depends on the maturity of the corp dev function. When you would want to have a dedicated integration leader in place, you're really early. Maybe you're still doing more of a one off approach on M and A transactions. Then you may not have a dedicated resource at that point, but as you make it more prevalent of your strategy, then you'd start looking at creating that as a dedicated role.

Yes, that'd be a great way to look at it. In summary, really having somebody there when you want to become acquisitive is very important, especially at the integration level. If you aren't going to be that acquisitive, then it's just extra headcount and maybe in some cases you may have an enterprise PMO where you, you can borrow that individual when you do an acquisition. So there are, there are multiple ways to slice this and given that it's hard to find all that talent, all in one person, you may find that maybe it's one or two people that end up being part of the imo. When you begin an acquisition, there are different ways and I'm using my critical thinking skills here to present multiple options for the audience and how you can have an integration lead or leads, but without actually having to carry the extra overhead per se of somebody who may not be working on a transaction when things are a little bit slow.

What's the primary role of an integration leader?

Making sure to coordinate all of those moving parts to deliver the value from the investment rationale at the end of it. That is, in a nutshell, our KPI, or okr, if you want to call it that even, which is making sure that we manage all those moving parts and govern it in a way that continues to move progress forward and then also achieving what we want out of this acquisition. And notably here I'm going to caveat the statement by saying it's achieving the right value of the acquisition for your customer, like for your customer is a really important part here because in the old days it was just, hey, let's bring in a company because it's complimenting something that we do right? In manufacturing, it's like, oh, I want to buy a foundry because it complements our ability to manufacture and have a better supply chain. But in this day and age, in our digital age, it's about driving quick access to our customers, quick value to our customers. And so acquisitions these days are about complementing what we can do for our customers. Imo practitioners out there, it's updating your framework so that as you go through integration, it's always keeping your customer in mind who will be receiving the value of why this acquisition makes sense.

Keeping the customer focused. Ultimately, you're responsible for the success of the deal.

That is a lot of responsibility. Yes, we work shoulder to shoulder with corporate development on that responsibility. It's not a send it over the fence kind of thing. We definitely want to partner with development to make sure we deliver complete value together.

Who gets blamed when things go awry?

Some cases we do, but if you play your cards right, you work with your steering committee, hopefully things don't go right too far. But certainly keeping your steering committee well informed of what's going on will help mitigate some of those high risk problems.

When do you like to get involved in the deal?

The last company I was at, I spent time with the CEO helping explain where we need to be involved. I prefer to be involved. I after the LOI has been sent out and that way I can be read in with the intention, the fact that we actually put something out there, it's official, if you will, that gives me a good sense that this deal will move forward. If you're a bit too early, especially if you get word from core development, especially if they're just sourcing things, it's great information to have, it's great context to have, but I'm not going to go jump into integration planning even if I have in my IMO a good strong framework. The fact that I will start to think about who I need to pull in this integration, who are the work stream, these I have to consider. That's a lot of work. And so waiting until the LOI is sent out, I have good confirmation that things are going to move forward. There's confidence from the board that they want to approve this. Okay, those are good signals for me to want to get involved in this and actually start to present and think about what I need to plan for as the deal starts to get closer and closer to close.

What about the assumptions that are created when building that investment thesis that leads to loi? Wouldn't you want to have some input there to help shape that since you're the one that openly has to execute on it?

That's a good philosophical question because in some ways we have to abide by a certain confidentiality. So if we get a little bit too ahead of ourselves, that sort of, that gets into a gray area there. However, let me apply a bit of problem solving here, which is as the integration lead, if you're doing your proper socialization of the importance of the IMO with corporate development, they should already have an indication of where you fold into those assumptions. Let's take a perfect example, which is just go out to lunch with corporate development, meet them at the water cooler or the virtual water cooler, if you will. There is no formality that you have to approach your peer in corporate development. But the more that they know about what you do, the more that they know about your philosophy, the values that you bring, your frameworks, the more that they then can include it in the assumptions, even if you're not involved. At least they have it in the back of their mind and you've seeded the idea of the IMO value with them, they might ping you to say, hey John, I have something I'm working on. Can you give me an opinion on xyz? Obviously, under confidentiality, they won't. They may not disclose what they're working on in full, but the fact that they can ask you that question and that you're now, you now have a seat at the table. That's actually a really important piece. So I'm not going to be outwardly saying, oh, yeah, I want to be in every deal review. That's not what I'm saying. But the fact that you can be considered at the table because you've done your job to socialize, the importance of the imo, that is a great step forward.

That's an interesting view around that. When I talk to some of the integration leads, when you look at some of the discrepancies that happen, it tends to be, hey, we budgeted a million bucks in three months to integrate these ERP systems. It comes to your plate and it's like, this is definitely going to cost a lot more and take a lot longer. That's where I'm curious on how do you avoid those kind of discrepancies from happening?

The details of that, if they go into the investment rationale, yeah, you should definitely want to have input. But what I'm saying is you're getting ahead of yourself, getting involved way too early. As they're developing the investment thesis, it may be premature. So. And by the way, creating the buy plan isn't an overnight process. It takes multiple days, multiple weeks. So there's plenty of time that you can get involved. There's plenty of time that they can ask you questions. And for sure, if in that particular key sign that you gave me, which is, hey, what's the optimal cost synergy of two ERP systems, of course they're going to ask me, right, in that particular case, because that is something that at the very detail level, we probably have a trend around. Meaning having done multiple integrations, we know the average cost of that. So that's feedback we can absolutely give to them.

It sounds like at the end of the day, it's all about having a good working relationship with corporate development so that you can work with each other and be able to just have that continuity in the process and be a team.

Communication, maybe I missed that, but the fourth skill is communication. Openly communicating with other teams so that they understand that the IMO works with you shoulder to shoulder all the way through the process.

Have you seen the integration role change over the years?

In some cases, yes. In some cases, no. I'd say that the importance of integration has become much more prevalent over the past decade, two decades, if you will. Maybe that's going a bit too far. But certainly within the past decade, the role of or the skills of the integration As I noted earlier, they tend to remain the same right at the core, it's about leading and governing the entire set of work streams that have to happen at integration. So core to that is communication, organization, leadership, emotional intelligence. Those are fundamentally core skills that you have to have. Now, will IMOs evolve over time? Most likely. Many of us having come through very traditional institutional training around integration, we're finding that there are more flexible ways to do things. There's agility in the way that we can do things. We can apply sort of an agile M and A activity into that so that we don't always have to abide by a gated approach. Everybody rushes to the gate, does a quick check, make sure we checked all the boxes, dot all the I's, cross all the T's. No, because what's happening is the markets change, the industry change, the fast pace of digital is changing a lot of things. So the fact that we can model and change our own frameworks to be more flexible and more fluid is something that IMOs are also looking at today.

Yeah, I like the whole trend around the project management approach is shifting to more of the emphasis on agility. A lot of the stuff that we started writing our Agile M and A framework around was around just some of those basic concepts. Do you see a continuing trend around utilizing these project management approaches from the software space as an example and just seeing more of that getting applied to M and A and maturing in that direction or something else?

I hardly believe that we will find more of the transition of software development, it's called methodologies and methods, into M and A. I'll take a perfect example and I was thinking about this just this morning, which is why do we still call it a workstream lead? Why don't we call it workstream leads? Do we always have to have one person who runs one workstream? Or let's say for finance or for employee engagement? Not necessarily. I'm going to borrow a extreme programming method here which is called pair programming, which is you have the designer and the require and the business analyst sitting beside the programmer. And together, as the programmer is writing the code and showing you what it'll do, the analyst is basically giving a head nod or head shake. That, yes, that is what we want. That is the requirement that was written by the customer, which could be an internal team or an external customer. Why don't we have that in workstreams? We should. We should have workstream leads. We should have paired workstream leads. So for example, if you're running the employee Workstream, you would have, of course, somebody in HR or people matters. But in addition to that, if the acquisition, for example, was to bring in, let's say, 60 to 600 new customer success individuals, okay, you should probably have somebody in your customer success team be part or be partially a lead as well, because there's a huge, huge impact to them bringing in 60 to 600 people. That's where I think we as the IMO have to look at all the moving parts, look at the bigger picture, determine where is it important to have this duality of responsibility so that then it becomes a much more paired approach to success than just one individual carrying the workload and responsibility and accountability for the success of that one work stream.

Yeah, that's a lot to shape up in terms of the practice of integrating companies. I'm excited what's to come. I know we got a bunch of things that we're working on together in terms of being able to create these types of tools, frameworks and make them available, almost like an open source type of availability with these resources. So they're companies where the integration team runs the confirmatory diligence. I've seen it as a trend, the lead for integration would actually manage the diligence and be a big part of that. So that way they're really trying to create that continuity between diligence and integration.

I think that's a fantastic approach. If you can have a culture that does that, I'd say go for it in some cases. If you can do that when you're a smaller company and build those habits and build that, that, that philosophy in, I think you could. You have something here like, seriously, we, we should get that person on the podcast.

If anyone's listening to this and has taken that approach, please reach out. We'd love to learn from your experience, get you out here on the podcast to share contrast. What's the better approach? Let me ask you, do you think every company should set up an imo?

Find out. The answer is no. Depending on the maturity of the company, depending on the maturity of your acquisition history, an IMO may or may not be required. I'll go back to my reference of if you're a series D company, several hundred million in funding, having an IMO early in the process, it doesn't make sense. Can you borrow time from others who are in the business line and put them as part of the imo? Sure, that happens all the time. Now as you get bigger, as you look to acquire more as a complex complexity of these integrations and or acquisitions also evolve, then you definitely want to start looking at having the formality of an imo. And that is so that you can make sure that as you present your thesis to the board that they feel confident that post close there is support, there's process, there's framework to deliver on the value of the acquisition. That way, in corporate development, when you're talking to the entire acquisition, you talk to it as a whole, with which is everything that you did to get to this point, plus everything that you plan to have after the close. So the idea is have a much more holistic approach to the acquisition as you mature your own corporate development team as well as you mature your own M and a strategy thesis, similar to.

When you would have a dedicated integration lead based on maturity of your M and A function. Can we back up a little bit, maybe clarify what exactly an IMO is in the integration lead? Where do they fit together?

The Integration Management Office is the formal name that we give to not only the people that are involved integration, the governance of the integration, but also the reporting of the success of this integration. So think of it as the full breadth of the methodologies encompassed under the umbrella called the Integration Management Office. There are individuals in the imo, one being the integration lead, who for all intents and purposes basically defines a framework how you want to run integration, and then starts to get involved in, let's say, integration planning after the LOI is signed. But this is an individual or individuals who are part of the IMO and are basically the managers of the Integration Management office. We have workstream leads and in some cases, if you're a large corporation or you have a dedicated IMO team, these workstream leads can be aligned per function. So you'll have a finance work stream lead, you'll have somebody who's dedicated to hr, somebody who's dedicated to the tech and product. Now, in many cases, workstream leads are individuals who we borrow from the business line. So these individuals have proved themselves to be big thinkers, they have the right critical thinking skills, they have a great network in the company, they have credibility in the company as well as I can't say this for everybody, but sometimes they just have the time to do it. So time is of the essence and the capacity and bandwidth to participate in this. But you will have these work stream leads who you borrow from the business within that you typically below the workstream lead, don't have a dedicated set of practitioners and integration who are just at the task level doing the day to day. We typically borrow time from folks in the business line because they're just that close to the activity that has to happen. And in many cases, what you'll do is you'll pair up somebody from the parent company with the acquired company and those two together will perform the tasks that are necessary in the work stream itself.

That's a great rundown. What advice would you have for somebody that's looking to pivot their career? Get into M and A integration.

There's as much that I can express in terms of philosophy of when I look for somebody to be integration lead. As much as there is a practical part of it. I would say that from somebody who's looking to pivot over the first recommendation is be the best at what you do. That carries a lot of weight. If you want to run the finance work stream. You're the best at accounts receivable, you're best at being the controller. Those are all wonderful skills to have one. Why? Because it establishes a baseline of trust of who you are and what you can deliver in terms of the value. You are the expert in your field. The second one is going beyond and extending, just being best at what you do is think bigger. Think about how this acquisition serves the greater good of the customer, but also the greater good of the company. Somebody who can communicate that is definitely already achieving what an IMO really at the fundamental level is looking to do, which is create value for overall the customer and the company. The last item I'd like to talk about is it's think outward. So if you can think outward beyond just yourselves and the company, but think about how this acquisition actually positions yourselves in the overall market. And this you can of course read from the buy plan and the investment rationale. But if you can advocate for that and you can communicate it, that is something at the most fundamental level is also important up at the steering committee because when you start to develop your okrs for the integration, if you can tie them to what you want to achieve as a greater company out in the market to your customers and communicate that well, that is a plus in my opinion, on what the stereo committee wants to hear. Because they're thinking bigger picture. Of course they want to know the issues because they want to be supportive and address those very quickly. But it is how is this imo, how is this integration lead taking this acquisition and helping us deliver a much bigger and better company forward?

Give me more of a practical how to. If I was interviewing for. For a role as an external person in the company.

Market research, lots and lots of market research. I'D say that in a way that isn't deemed to be competitive to corporate development. They do a ton of research. They're in there every day looking at the models, determining what makes sense. But in a particular case, let's use a prior company that I was at. It was a global consulting firm. One of the corporate development team members pushed me with what was called Project Tokyo. It was of course an acquisition of another consulting firm. But this firm had a footprint in another country that we wanted to get into that space. One of the things that I did first was determine basically, you know, the GDP of the country that looked like a target for us. But then also determining what was the possible market size because, remember, confidentiality, they didn't tell me the name of the company. But just determining the market size for the services that we do in that market is forward thinking. And by doing so, what that allowed me to do is consider if this acquisition is successful, what are the things that I have to do as integration lead to make sure that we reach the market potential that was determined by this acquisition. And in doing so, I have to research what the market is. There's a perfect example of somebody who's thinking above and beyond. And at the time I was just doing technical diligence, I was just looking at systems determining. Is there a fit between what we have as our base code and what we, we would have in terms of what we're looking to acquire? But the ability to think above and beyond, like where does this technology deliver more value into the market? That is something that they thought, huh? That's not normal for technical person to do. So that showed them that, like, I'm willing to step beyond my own comfort zone and look at the greater picture.

I like that example where you really can take a scenario and put that forward thinking to it and be able to give that impression. What do you think the future of the integration role looks like?

In a nutshell, I think the future of integration is going to evolve. It's going to evolve beyond what many of us who grew up over time, let's say the past decade or so, in terms of institutional ways of doing integration. We're going to find that the role of integration will start to become more agile, applying more of those software development practices and methods that are part of the Agile principles into mergers and acquisition. Notably in integration, as I noted earlier, there is a lot of things that's changing very quickly. There's a lot of fluidity in what's happening. And if you're not able to adjust quickly in those changes. Then if you're still using standard gated approaches, you'll find that two weeks is already too late to make a change to something. And I'll use a perfect example, one in which I was leading up integration. We had acquired a company overseas and we were doing a legal entity consolidation. One of the things that we found was if we can do this legal entity consolidation, according to the book, it's filing everything with the agencies that necessary, waiting until we got approval, then doing our notices to our vendors and then doing our notices to our suppliers and then doing notice to customers. What we found was that was an eight week process because we had to wait for all these gates and checks to happen every time. So what we decided was, okay, can we compress this? And our customers already heard it because it was publicly announced in terms of the acquisition. But they, they were getting antsy. They were asking me or they were asking actually our AR team. It's like, when are we going to get the new Fein? Because they need to change our system as well. So what we decided to do was we decided to compress that timeline by having our legal team do the necessary filing, wait the necessary time. But in parallel we had accounts payable, accounts receivable, all of those teammates, prepare all the necessary templates and have legal review those templates for the proper wording, have those templates ready, leave a blank space for the new Fein. And then when we knew that Fein was ready, we actually had that template already loaded in our mass communication system. So all we had to do was change the FEIN number in the template, hit send and it would immediately go out. And that time was only three and a half weeks. The customers didn't have to wait two months to hear about our new Fein, change our FEIN in their system. It also respectively allowed us to not have delays in billing and or delays in payment. So what would have been two months, possibly three months? Cause they have to go through the process of changing their own system. We compressed it to three and a half weeks.

M& A for you, time is value.

Agreed.

Earlier the year I did an interview with Matt Arsenel about career path and we focused on corporate development and he had some good insights. I like how we focused on the integration career path. Now I don't know if it's almost like getting exposure to people that already have a background with project management to saying, hey, here's this project management on steroids. That sort of gets more into program management. If that's more of where there's an opportunity to find additional resources or build a bridge for that kind of career path? Or do you think it's more coming from the business itself as an operator, somebody that's maybe even an operational role that would be a better fit? Where do you see the big strengths and the fits that lend into an integration lead role?

I want to be a curmudgeon when I say this, but I think the best possible person to become an integration leader actually comes from the business line more than it comes from somebody who's like in the enterprise PMO team. So why do I say that? To be a program manager or project manager. Right. There's a lot of rigor that you go through to become a certified project manager. And I appreciate that. But in many ways what I found in other PMs that I've worked with is they have a very linear perspective of how to run their approach for a project, which is fine because the fundamentals of organization, task driven, outcome driven metrics and dashboards is part of the certification process. So I appreciate that. And as an IMO lead, I'd love to have somebody on my team who can do that because they're really good at it. But sometimes what I find is that these individuals are so focused on delivering the outcomes of just that one project, they don't look above and beyond the linear skills that they have. I cherish, absolutely cherish. But then I also need somebody who can think bigger about what the implications are of a particular issue or risk. Issues and risks are something we have to manage all the time. And yes, PMs will do that as well, certainly. But what I find is that sometimes for them and their ability to go and think problem solve beyond just that particular work stream that they work on, that takes time and maturity to grow over time. But now I'm going to use the counterpoint, which is when you have somebody from the business line, this individual already has the expanse of communication and network with other business line leads as well. So, for example, I'll take one director of finance. They're working with people in sales, they're working with people in manufacturing, their peers in those business lines, so that they are now thinking beyond just how do I close the books at the end of the month? They're thinking, how do I get the right data? How do I work with folks in manufacturing so that we can close the books on inventory two days after the month end? Those are things that I would expect of an IMO lead, because at some point, this IMO lead acts as liaison between the work streams and then your steering committee. And the steering committee is not going to want to know, here's a problem with the project they're working on, the workstream they're working on. And then, oh, by the way, have you considered what the implications are of the solution to the other teams? You have to have somebody who can think holistically around all of that. And that's what the steering committee cherishes as somebody who's an integration leader.

Basically a business manager.

Yeah, a business manager who's been around a while in the company, who's got that network and credibility to know other people that they can tap to so that they can say, oh, I need your help on this.

They know the business, but they also know the key people in the business that they can work with.

Correct. Think of it as sort of like the Abraham Lincoln effect. So Abraham Lincoln, when he was president, he created a cabinet of folks that supported and were the best at what they did. His presidency was wrapped around just the experts that he could go to and tap on the shoulder and ask about things regarding Treasury, State, obviously what was happening in terms of the war. But the overall way that he approached it was, I know I am the President of the United States and I'm supposed to have all the answers, but I don't. So I want to ask all these other individuals who are part of my cabinet, help guide me and be my advisors to make my presidency that much better.

If you were to create a program to prepare somebody for an integration lead role, what would be the key components in that program?

I wouldn't necessarily call it a program, if I may. So I'm going to. I'm going to change your question a little bit, which, you know, I tend to do. I would consider it more mentorship. If you're heading up corporate development and you want to have an imo. So let's say you want to build up an IMO and you want to. You find somebody in the business line who's very well organized, they have good head on their shoulders, they've been with the company for a little while. You would want to mentor them to understand what you do in corporate development so that they start to understand how to interact. But additionally, I would also find other mentors for them in other companies who are also IMO leads. So extending a network, maybe using M and A science, we have a lot of collateral out there that expresses how to stand up an integration function. There's a lot of material out there. But I think what's important is giving this person Self service education, but also continuing to be a mentor to support them. And it doesn't have to be head of corporate development for the first six months it could be, but then six months after that you want them to be a mentor, somebody else who is also as well versed or as well networked in the company because again, you're going to be communicating with a lot of people across those work streams. So find somebody who can support you with that network, with the number of people they can connect to. Also somebody who is open and supportive of this individual moving up into an IMO role.

I like the mentorship. I've talked to practitioners before where they basically are handed a slew of templates and that was pretty much it and they had to figure it out themselves.

I feel bad. That does happen probably more often than we like. If, if this person was selected to lead up the imo, then there must have been some reason, some trust, some foresight into this person's ability to. There's something there. I can't imagine too many IMOs where you just toss somebody in, give them a bunch of templates and expect them to succeed without that drive, that desire, that openness to learn, that continuous improvement. There's something to that. I just feel bad. That happens more often than we like. There should be a lot more guidance provided to folks when they're starting an imo.

Great thoughts. John, can you talk a little bit about this M and A Science foundation initiative that you're working on? Because it's something that's interesting. You've seeded it as part of the things that we've been working on in effort of making M and A A a better place. Love to just hear some of your thoughts and what your goals are with that.

This is a project that between Kisan and I, you and I, we dreamed up in our earlier conversations. We felt that there are underserved communities out there who don't understand what M and A is or don't feel it's a career path for them. So the foundation is an effort for us to be able to reach out and democratize this magical box, to open the box and share with folks, here are the practices, here's the definition of what M and A is. There are rules for everybody in M and A. Whether you come from the best school possible, whether you come from a mid tier school. M and A is no longer just this middle magical career path that only the best folks who come out of the best schools have at their disposal. The intention is we will provide education. We will provide a scholarship as well as we will provide our time and use of our software so that individuals can also practically learn how to do M and A because of Deal Room itself. And all of that together is the foundation and we have already started the foundation. It is officially registered. We look to our website up here in the next few weeks. We will begin talking more about it after as Kisan and I have other speaking engagements. We feel that the foundation is going to be a really important part of our culture here at M and A Science, but also in a way that we will showcase what M and A is and how M and A can be a career path for anybody.

Excited to see how that matures.

Thanks. We're looking forward to it. It is beyond a passion project. It is a must have project for us.

It's going to be great to hear more. John, what's the craziest thing you've seen in M and A?

I'll go back to my very first story when we talked about my career, how I got started, which is doing not only an integration but also doing implementation of a product that was not only hair raising but I think I probably gained a few gray hairs at that time because it's interesting that in the process of trying to implement a standard ERP software that then we have to go work with a second company as they're doing integration of their own software into the core product, trying to find ways to solve for those moving parts. That was probably the most interesting for me. Now I'll be honest, a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of long hours. It was like doing two jobs at once. Whether you're doing implementation or you're doing integration. Those are full time roles. I was young, I probably had the time to spend, I had the energy to do it. So I learned a lot, if I may be so bold to say, in that time of two and a half years I probably aged five, five and a half years. There was just a lot that I learned, a lot of lessons, a lot of sort of stumbling blocks, a lot of failures. But through that process that for me was probably the most interesting thing I participated in. I would not recommend that for anybody ever. I definitely wouldn't. But the learnings there I take with me to today and I love talking about it because it's one of those things that you had to jump out of the pan into the fire and it was one of those character building engagements.

You got thrown in the deep end to get your career started there and it was unknown.

I just started the project just as a standard technical implementation manager. And all of a sudden my senior partner comes up to me and says, oh yeah, by the way, we're also integrating this product. Let's go figure it out. Like, okay, I'll do what I can, sir.

That's a good way to take the challenge and build from it.

For those interested in integration, if you have any questions, I am hardly available to anybody answer questions about moving into an integration career. It's been something I've been doing for a long time and I really enjoy it now that I'm outside of the industry in the software side now, as a provider, I'm still very passionate about helping those. So if you need any mentorship, any coaching, please feel free to reach out. I'm on LinkedIn John V. Morata, so please reach out anytime. Happy to help.

John. Thank you so much for your time today. Enjoyed the conversation.

Thank you Kisan. It's been a ton of fun.

Hey, my pleasure. Here's to the deal.

Here's to the deal.

Thank you for taking the time to explore the world of M and A with our podcast. Please subscribe for more content and conversations with industry leaders. If you like our podcasts, please support us by leaving a five star review and sharing it. I enjoy hearing feedback and connecting with our listeners. You can reach me by my email. It's Kisan K I S o n@dealroom.net M&A Science is sponsored by Dealroom, a project management solution for mergers and acquisitions. Additional educational content is available on Deal Room's blog@dealroom.net blog. Thank you again for listening to M and A Science.

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