Lessons Learned from Leadership Onboarding

Hello Ma Friends. Anyone that charges you per page for a virtual data room is not your friend. It made sense 20 years ago when people would show up to your office to scan documents, but with today's cost of cloud storage, it's a dirty scam. That's why I'm here to tell you about Firmroom.com's new data plan that includes 50 gigs of data storage for only $800 per month. And that would be over $300,000 in the per page pricing world. Don't take my word for it. Check it out for yourself by starting your own free trial@firmroom.com check it out firmroom.com I'm Kisan Patel and you're listening to M and A Science, where we talk with deal professionals and learn valuable lessons from their experience. This podcast focuses on stories, strategies, and what actually happened during M and A deals. Welcome to M and A Science, where leading M and A practitioners share lessons learned from their experience. If you're interested in keeping up with the latest from M and a science, visit mascience.com subscribe to our free newsletter where we share highlights from our interviews and invitations to events as we build the greatest community of fourth thinking M&A practitioners. That's mascience.com I'm your host, Kisam Patel, CEO and founder of M and A Science. Joining me today is Kim Jones, HR Director M& A at Microsoft. Microsoft is a multinational technology corporation that produces computer products, software, hardware and related services, among other things. They are traded on NASDAQ under msft. Today we're going to talk about the top lessons learned from M and A leadership onboarding. Kim, how are you?

It's good to be here. It's always interesting and I learned something from the other. So thank you for inviting me.

Welcome back. Thank you for coming back. I didn't scare you off? This is great.

Nope. And all the little swag that we get at the seminars and stuff, that helps. Cause I keep those. I feel like now I have to contribute back again.

Can we trade? Can I get some Microsoft swag?

Yeah, sure. I don't actually have any, but we'll talk.

Finally got off the Xbox wait list. I think it just took about two years. But we do have a new Series X at home.

I'm probably still on the waitlist.

Well, if you're ever in Chicago, you're welcome to come over and play with my son and I. Can we kick things off a little bit about your background?

The nice thing about Microsoft, we have a dedicated M and A Practice and so I've been in this team for the last eight years prior to that got the bug early in my career and as I did acquisitions as part of my day job in other companies in hr. So I've seen a little bit of both sides of having fit it in and from a US perspective and also being based in London, we're doing acquisitions internationally there too. So I've had a little bit of experience from both. But so that's a little bit about me and the M and A experience.

A lot of corporate M and A a lot of deals. How many deals do you think you worked on in that span?

At least 20. If as I think about end to end either smaller deals or some of our larger deals and at different companies and then bit involved in some others. So.

And the biggest, baddest deal we currently.

Have a pretty big one going on at Microsoft. So that's big. But I've done some that were in the size of 2600 employees in about 10 different countries. This other one that's currently happening is a little bigger. So it's never dull. And I think all sizes of acquisitions take a lot of work and insight anyways. Even small deals are always interesting and sometimes take just as much work.

I like how your measurement goes straight to the people count. How is M and A onboarding different from traditional onboarding?

There are many differences. I think the journey to onboarding is through a different lens. As I think about how people come on through an acquisition. They're not always choosing to be acquired, but then they're part of the process. They can choose with their feet if they leave. But a lot of the employees as part of it. It's not their decision to join. Plus they come with work and a ways that they're getting work done versus applying for a job and coming into a team and learning what that team is all about. I think of that combination like how you ensure you're meeting employees where they're at. It's super important. It's a different journey for them. So I think there are some definitely some unique parts that way to think through.

I like the clear distinction that they're already coming in with the set way of doing things versus and work and.

Deliverables of hey, we still have to do this in a new system, but I still have to deliver it in a month. We have customers, we have revenue, we have all of these things where a new employee comes with okay, I'm getting my laptop and I'm figuring out my.

Team on the new employee you have to do the whole onboarding steps, training, things of that sort. How would you weight the complexity between the two?

Both are complex, but new employees typically get at least six months to onboard. You get that period where you're going on day one, and it's. So I think the complexity is you're doing onboarding into. You're trying to do your work in a new system. Potentially, if you think about going to a foreign country, you don't speak the language, but all of a sudden you're expected to operate and do all that. I think that's some of the complexities that acquisitions and how their leaders make decision, what their budgets are, how they hire, like, all of that kind of changes for them. Whereas a new employ, you're coming into a system that you're choosing, that's already set up versus how you're integrating over time. That can vary based on the integration approach. At Microsoft, we have various types of integration. So I think if you're integrating into our systems, that's one thing. And then if you're remaining more of an independent on your own systems, that comes with other challenges and complexities of how to think through compliance. But the connections and those types of.

Things sounds like the difference between boarding a train and boarding a moving train.

Yeah, exactly. And if you miss it, do we realize the deal value of the investment that we've made to purchase the company?

It sounds like that's harder to do.

Yeah. And productivity, uncertainty, lack of clarity, doing something new typically decreases productivity, but the expectations are that productivity will remain the same, or that's the hope. And that's just hard.

How important is it to get M and A onboarding right?

I think it's very important. One of the things you asked of, what's the difference? I mean, we have a acquired employee orientation and acquired manager orientation, which is similar to new employee orientation. You learn about the company, you learn about benefits, you may learn about our systems. But as I said, like, they come with work. And there's so many complexities of helping them learn that new language, who they work with, if a CEO isn't used to having a boss, how that process works. So really understanding how decisions are made, who they actually need to engage now to release a product or to get something out or who they talk to, all of that is so different than what they've been used to, potentially. It's harder to figure out why you're still trying to, like you said, jump on the moving train, things like that.

When we talk about leadership, what's the extension of that because we talk about CEO helping him find his place, but what else would that include when you think of leadership?

There's one example where we had a CEO was the only person reporting into a Microsoft Team directly and then that person was bringing back all the information to their teams. There's also like that person being able to provide that decoder ring or operate in new ways in that manner too where they're used to just distributing information, but now they're also decoding information of what that means of like here's how this decision is playing out or here's why we need to do this compliance. And they're the only one translating that. And I think that can be hard too of really knowing where those decisions are, where they can still influence. I think one thing I've heard that I love that inquire leader said is always ask if it's recommended or required. Cause I think leaders coming into a new environment, especially being acquired by Microsoft, being paid to come into the company to scale your product is exciting, but you get told something and you think it's required where it's just really recommended. But then you also have at scale like you might have to talk to 10 people to get something done versus just going to get it done. So I think there's that ebb and flow that people just really have to get used to that style and what really works to continue to get whether it's a product to continue to deliver to a customer.

Are there other situations where you'd have a broader set of leaders? I'm thinking functional leads, other C suite folks.

Yeah. And that can be when you have one person that's used to running a company and then yeah, you break off GNA functions to go report directly you've broken a little bit of their decision making, how they used to work together. And that also is just a journey of learning. Then a new manager style, then how you bring that back together. So it also can create more either meetings or time spent to get to the same decision. And your job changes in some ways. If you're working in a finance team at Microsoft, you're working as part of a team that you may be more specific in what you do versus you ran all of finance at a company that was maybe 100 people or that type of situation.

It sounds like a lot of this stems from your overall integration strategy. Are you doing standalone, partial, full? I don't know if you even have instances of doing transformational if that comes up.

We've purchased recently like new businesses to Microsoft to really help us grow and to really meet our customers. Where they're at bringing in that is great. But it's also then learning how they get stuff done so that we can enhance even Microsoft and that's training people here, here being at Microsoft new ways of doing things and approaching and that's also changed for them. So that can be difficult too. And just learning a new industry. Oh okay. That's how those customers engage or that's.

How that works could vary quite a bit all based around that strategy.

Even as you think some of the bigger acquisitions we've done, they take time to integrate with our systems, with our people to make sure we're doing it right, that we're not do no harm to the current business and customers. And we may have people in different systems of a manager at Microsoft managing a Microsoft Team that has on our systems, on our like what I would say terms and conditions, rewards and then we might have still people on what they came with. That's really challenging to constantly flip back between two systems from who has time in the day to go into two systems or if you even need to approve an expense report and you're not in their system like it makes it just really challenging for business processes to flow.

How would you contrast the pre pandemic onboarding to today? What's the good and bad from the changes?

I just stepped back like everything changed. We Knew Prior to 2020 we'd never be the same. But I think about that span of time of how things done walked out the door. We went from an office centric workplace to a lot of in person events to I probably wasn't on video calls all day. And so I think about that like why we've always done hybrid work. We've relied heavily especially in M and A on in person interactions to build trust quickly, to really immerse ourselves in the company's culture because we don't have a lot of time for that. So even being able to see how they engage together if we're in their office just to see their rituals, what's important to them, building that trust, then you're really able to have those sometimes really hard, difficult conversations that are personal. That changed drastically to even being able to figure out how do we even do i9 verifications virtually like we're bringing on 60 employees in the US in one area that used to be like we're verified it in person for M and A. What do we do now? How do we do that? How do we change and really pivot to this virtual and still build connections, trust, cater to like what these teams are coming into. So I think the biggest thing is like we started adding a lot of our acquired employee orientations into our new employee orientations, which is so good because it's a lot of the same content, but they're in with people that don't know where they're coming from or like the stress of like, why I have to take time out of my day to attend this orientation where I was supposed to be in these product meetings or this design meeting or all of those things that it slows down their work. So it was just a different lens of how do we switch to completely virtual, still engage with people, still make it personal, still be able to create trust. And I think that was just hard. And really how do we like just take those lessons and that like human nature, like gravitates towards like connections, all of just that that makes more sense when you can meet a person and you can be like, oh, okay, I get that. That's just your normal tone doesn't indicate anything. Like, now we can actually just start to like work through these challenges. So I think that's how we approached it. But everything changed and we had to like really pivot and even test our own assumptions on that. And then how do we go back in with different listening systems to see what worked, what information are they still needing? What came out of that is the communication piece was so critical. There were some assumptions we made that people would want to learn more about Microsoft because we gave them in the new employee orientation experience more information about all the company, but we didn't maybe prep them as well that this was coming or that was like why this was a good thing to learn about the company versus they wanted it tailored. There's lots of just different learnings within that. And then I think, wow, now we're back to where we can do some in person and how do we pivot to still make that even hybrid experience where some people are virtual and some are in person, that it's still engaging and people feel like they're welcome getting information and it doesn't matter if they're in person or virtual. I think that's harder than all virtual or all in person.

I've personally had a big win coming out of COVID where we started doing these virtual roundtables. I found them fascinating because to get corporate M and A practitioners on one call and they're expediting their networking, that's a big win that I wouldn't take back and Say we're going to keep doing that because it's actually way more convenient than trying to find time to go to the conference and things of that sort. Did you have anything like that? Any big wins that you're not going.

To take away with being all virtual? It was easier to schedule. People were not always like in the air. If you needed a leader to speak at something or to engage, you didn't have to plan that. Okay, they're in a different country now we have to plan two days of travel. Like things could be more efficient. I think cost wise. Definitely that was a big win of if you're not having 10 people travel to do something or doing in person events like there is a cost savings to that those things. Efficiency by all means. Like that was awesome. Wait, I can just schedule these 10 people and they're here. Okay, that's great.

I've heard of that. More people, more heads piled onto diligence calls.

Leaders like availability like our executives at Microsoft. They're not off traveling somewhere. You're planning around it. That was awesome. The only downside is then the back to back meeting. So you're like, okay, now we have more meetings that we can just attend because we're here.

Let's get into the meat of this interview. What are the lessons learned about M and A onboarding?

Really meeting the target where they are being flexible to pivot to what their environment is. And I think really looking at any gaps of leadership, as I mentioned, like when we only had one leader reporting in is that messaging reaching employees and where we can identify where it's not, how do we get in and help fix that and just continuing that communication of why it's important to learn about Microsoft, why it's important to learn about them and then where that kind of comes together and continually working on making it really transparent about decision making and also that it's okay to not know. Like a lot of these people are used to especially key talent like driving it, knowing it, how to really get stuff done and in a new language, in a new environment that can be really challenging at first. So just really helping people understand that that's okay. Our growth mindset culture really helps with that. All of those things create uncertainty and like I said, that's where drops in productivity happen and that's where the deal value starts to erode. So I think all of those things have been how do we think about that and include that on the upfront? Onboarding and think about onboarding then as a continuous process versus just a week.

A month you had two different distinctions. One was meet them where they are and the other part, like brainwashing them.

Yeah, marketing. I like to think of it as marketing.

Introduce them to the organization they're going to be part of and the culture and things of that sort. How do you balance that out? Are the two very different things that.

Is that art and science piece. It's just constantly evaluating. Just from my role in general, I think about are we still seeing angst in the system and is there stuff we can do for that? That's an ultimate challenge and something we're still learning. And this is where I love like the roundtables and stuff like that of talking to other people who have ideas that we can try out or learn. But it's really staying in tune, having conversations. This is where I think that those in person meetings of. Even then you're at a dinner, happy hour lunch, like you pick up on those things and then you just figure out what you're going to do to act on them. We're on the front end of most of the acquisitions and hand it off. So it's just like keeping in touch and really trying to create plans and coaching points for leaders and the teams that are working on taking them forward.

There's a lot that goes into the planning. There's a lot of dealing with the unexpected. I want to learn as much as I can from you, Kim. If we can start from the beginning, I want to get your journey as HR M&A lead. Actually. The next person listening, the next Kim Jones listening to this. Give them that. Hey, this is what it looks like ideally. And how do you start thinking through? I feel like I get a lot of this sense and the importance of culture and things of that. But when you mash up too much of the information, you don't get how things come in play across the timeline of the deal. Yeah, and I think there's like a big reality check there because you only got so many conversations or questions at the very beginning. And then things progress to the point where it's chaotic and someone's head's exploding. Hopefully not yours. But what does that look like and what's coming in play to make sure that all flows together.

Yeah, I think the nice thing about having a practice is there is, I wouldn't say playbooks, but like a natural cadence to like our M and a timeline and then meetings that we do within that. So I think there's pieces that we identify the culture as we're identifying talent. There's meetings we do just specifically, I think about from the start of it, being involved in like the strategy approval to the loi, getting to where we're getting approval to go through the sign process and dd all of that, I think about within those pieces of it, you're learning, you're gleaning pieces of information to be able to use with not only about Microsoft Team you're working with, but then about the target. And then we have different ways that we put together a talent plan where we align to the integration strategy. How are we bringing these employees on, and then what are those kind of key milestones that we need to really focus in on? A as we bring the leaders along on the journey and then when we are able to bring employees in, what does their path look like? And so there are a lot of key meetings that we have to make sure that we're prepared for that, that we're engaging in the right way, that we're thinking through employee experience on that, how we're communicating and how we use those tools to do that, to bring people along on that along the way. There's sometimes a gap in the steps and there's challenges or people react. Because I think M and A is personal, it's business, but it's also very personal and there's a lot of change. So I think the cadence and timeline that we have and the meetings that we set up to work through it methodically help us then deal with the things that come up or hopefully if even virtually. We have to build trust quickly with leaders so that we can bring these things up, deal with them. And I think that's really where you start to see, like how do the target leaders deal with that? And you really start to see then how they translate that into their organization and then identifying challenges and things like that. But you're right, it's a fast timeline. This is at warp speed, I think from a letter of intent to sign in six weeks. And you're doing due diligence. But then that may be where then you start to bring employees into the journey and then thinking about how do we align their roles, what's their path to get to build trust, excitement that they're coming on board to this new engineering team.

Let's isolate this to pre LOI strategy approval around there. And I want to bring the CEO of the company in it because we want to get a sense of how the onboarding is going to come out. And I'm really curious about the things that you would start putting in play. What are those conversations? Look like you touched on culture, understanding culture, building trust.

There are sometimes we get involved with the strategy is really probably more internal. And our business development corp dev teams are talking to the target. We may be involved in some of that 3D too. But when we really get to then when we can engage with the target, I think it's the first meeting we have with them is to prep them. But then we have this organizational deep dive where we really try to understand they do a culture piece, we give something about our teams at Microsoft and then they walk us through their org, how they think about things, how decisions are made, and then they really break down. Okay, this is how our engineering team is run and here's some key talent. This is how our sales team is run and here's some key talent. And that meeting, how we set it up allows for information for us to really start to understand who they are. And then from there I meet with the target leaders weekly to figure out what we need to do to move through like our HR milestones and key deliverables to transact the deal and make sure that we're thinking through employee experience and the culture as part of that.

You have that conversation before loi?

Yeah, Once we sign the LOI is when we start to engage with the target because then they're committed to the exclusivity. And so I think that's usually typically, I would say every deal has its own kind of cadence and things. But if we can get to the an organizational deep dive, that's where we start. Our talent planning, really understanding the organization. And that has to be aligned too with like, why are we buying this? What are the key value drivers of what's happening? But that really kicks off our process of even initially, that's how I get insights into their culture. How do you support employees, how do you engage them? How do you communicate? All of those types of questions to me, really start to get at little pieces of it. And then based on our time and our capability of even our team even, we've taken that to the next level of trying to interview key leaders within their organization to really unpack how they operate. That's the luxury more than anything. When I think about like our deal volume over the last years, that meeting.

You described to understand the culture, the org chart decisions, what is that referred to? Is there like a name for that meeting?

We call it an organizational deep dive. We prep our leaders for it, we prep the target leaders for it so that they can come prepared to really have a dialogue. And we have the engineering Leaders. If we're talking about the sales and marketing team, we have those people that want to hear that. And if we're talking about gna, we have people that come in to really understand like what those roles are and how they operate. We try to keep it under three hours or break it up depending on the size of the acquisition and the size of the team so that it's easier for people to attend and really understand that information. And that just gives a very high level framework for us to work for moving forward.

And the outline of that org Deep Dive was talking about cultures sounds like of both organizations, the organization structure, how they make decisions, identifying key talents, anything else in terms of what you cover.

Depends on how much time we have. There are times when we will talk about engineering processes or how the teams work together. If it's a sales and marketing team, their sales process or DNA, sometimes people wear multiple hats. So just within that, like how their structure works and how they operate together. Ultimately to me what comes out of success is different people are looking for different things in that meeting. Like we do have our total rewards team that leads a key part of that. They're looking to try to start to identify like how they're thinking about their roles, their key talent. And for me, I always like it because when we spend time talking about their culture and the Microsoft culture and team that they're going into, it starts to give people insights into what they're getting into and they start to see similarities, maybe they start to see some things that aren't aligned that they may want to dig a little deeper on or vice versa for us too. The nice thing is when there's a lot of like, oh, that's how we think about that too, just as a general philosophy. And it really starts, starts to build trust, it starts to build curiosity about, okay, that's the team I'm joining that I find super helpful and always to me pays off and tends to be longer than we plan for because we're like, you got 20 minutes, you got 20 minutes, then that tends to bleed. But you just take away so many insights and like connections with the leaders.

I want to get a sense in your head, what are you digging in for in that meeting? I'm thinking part of it is information for strategic planning and how the company's going to really come together versus identifying risks. Doing the core of diligence.

It starts our diligence process. If you get a leader in there that can't really talk about their team or how they talk about their team that's where we know, okay, I need to follow up on that. I need to learn more there. But it really kicks off our diligence process and validates some things. Since I've done this a few times, we have a prep session we have, we talk about what we're trying to accomplish and then you really see how different targets show up. And as I think back through some of the challenges some leaders have now, I looked at that meeting, I'm like, wow, that was all over the place. And they talked through here and we couldn't really get them back on track. But it was the same prep as this other leader that went through it in this magical way. So there's things like that that you can just start to see where maybe you need to add a little bit more coaching or support for them to be successful.

Thinking more with the leadership part in that there are certain things you emphasize at that stage as well because it sounds like culture is a big part of it in the way the organizations work, how they run their team. Are there other things that you're doing to prepare them for this big transition.

That'S so early on. Sometimes it's the first time the engineering leaders have met the target leaders. So I think of it as a starting point versus anything.

So you're not like, hey, here's what's to come and starting to scare them a little bit.

No, I mean we can talk about next steps and what we're going to do in the follow up, but it's still early on and we're just really kicking off due diligence. So it doesn't solve all problems or tell us all things. Depending on if it's virtual in person. Virtual, it could be three hours. We could break it up and add another hour for a team. The ones we've done in person are nice because we can tend to then take those leaders to lunch, to dinner and talk through other things and get other insights too and build relationships that way.

Do you got any specific questions that you ask leaders to really figure out your gotchas or stuff that gets some interesting information that you're looking for?

We're pretty transparent, like here's the things we're looking for, here's what's helpful for you to describe. And then the great thing is we have leaders asking questions specific to their expertise or other things. So it does become a conversation or that's the goal. So we prep them with specific questions. Sometimes the conversation based on who's in the room can go in many places. It doesn't solve everything. It's a starting point that kind of kicks off the rest of our diligence in our planning of what that timeline can be.

What about this? How do you fire people? Can you ask that in sort of the diligence, probing. How do you fire people?

Absolutely. We want to know their practices, if they have principles around it. We look at attrition, stuff that comes in that's in the data room or asking and we'll just have the conversation of what is your practice, what is your principles? Like how do you handle an exit, how do you handle termination? We need that information and we need to know does that match how we do it A lot of times, like even recently, like how people approach it and let people leave with grace. Definitely just encourages me. That fits with the Microsoft. Those are definitely relevant questions. It may not be in day one.

Yeah, I was gonna say probably not that early. Anything else on the culture side? Because we're still pretty early learning about the culture. You got the two way approach, you're educating them on the Microsoft culture. Anything else you do? I mean are surveys a thing that you do? Or other diligence approaches, Glassdoor reviews?

We do all that research on our own too, but we will ask questions. We don't necessarily do surveys and we do it more once we bring employees in. So we do it that way. We've evaluated a ton of different cultural approaches. I think right now based on the workload, the amount of acquisitions we've tried to just figure out where do we work it into, kind of the meetings and what we can do to keep the deal on track and just resource wise. But then we do make sure people know especially like what the Microsoft culture is, which I think the journey that Microsoft's been on has been a big attractor. So I think that's helpful. We do have listening systems. They do fall into like once they're integrated into our listing systems that way and we obviously analyze all that feedback and address any gaps. I think for M and A specifically once we get to onboarding and they're on our systems, we can set up team sites for questions onboarding, like check ins that way. Those are some of the tools that we've done.

Is there anything you dig into to give you a sense of how you would approach onboarding a leader or may alter your approach onboarding leader.

We do look at their experience. It has to align though to what is their role going forward. One acquisition I had, it was smaller company so I think only about 30 to 40. But the person had never had a boss. The board of directors, I think was his dad. But it was all of those things that were like, okay, that's going to be a way different type of onboarding from even a manager level of what the our deal lead is going to have to really think about and create time to help this person really understand, like then what that means to have a boss work at Microsoft. And I remember talking to this dealer, he's like, I know you told me it was going to take time, but man, I had to spend a lot of time just working with them to understand that. So from that sense, like, it's a minor example, but we try to customize it to that. We have a acquired manager orientation that kind of is a more personal conversation with the deal leads and HR about how to think about how we do rewards, how we engage employees. And then of course, we have all of our standard Microsoft training for managers and leaders. And so we want them to be able to fall into that cadence just because there's so much time, attention and work that's been done there and matches what everybody else does. But I think it's that bridge to get them there that we try to at least identify and figure out what else we can do to help.

That's cool. So if you went on Glassdoors and saw really low approval rating, I'd be curious.

It never tells the full story. Usually it's the people that complain anyway. It's more how they react to that, how they think about that. To me, it tells a lot.

I'm looking at Microsoft's Glassdoor review right now.

How are you?

People love it.

Microsoft does a great job of really thinking about the employee experience and making it personal for you. We try to replicate that and how we engage with the acquired talent too. But it can be hard because it's change and they didn't always choose it. They may benefit from it, but they didn't always initially choose it. So it's more that journey. The other thing we've done of working with acquired leaders is once a year we run this program now. It's called Inside Microsoft. It's led to another Acquired leaders. Starting this culture plus community with acquired leaders. And it's really kind of how do we get you information about Microsoft that's helpful for an acquired leader? You have a network of people that have had a shared experience. What's your lived experience, what's worked for you? So there's speakers, there's breakout sessions. When we did it in person, there was more networking. So I think it really goes around just creating a community of people that have come on through acquisition, that even though there's communities at Microsoft that kind of work for leaders and that's universal, there's something unique about coming in as an acquired leader of your experience, coming with work, leading through that. But I think just being able to have others that have that lived experience can share success stories. But also where they hit the wall, where they normalize that too, I think that's helpful. That's post close. They're integrated leaders. That's usually six months to 12 months post. But those are other things. We've just tried to have a cadence of interactions to keep that connections learning going so that people can really feel connected or share their own experience.

Going back to our timeline, we passed our LOI stage getting into the real diligence. What changes or what happens next as we get closer to close, if there's.

Anything diligence leads us to typically sign like that, we agree, okay, this hits our value drivers and we get to sign. I think between sign and close, what's.

The typical date range that you see between sign and close? Big range.

But yeah, I would say like for a company that's about 100, 150 employees that we're looking to integrate as part of engineering team, it can vary. Especially if it's not an asset deal. That's a whole different timeline. But what I look about between sign and close, just from a people perspective, there's tech and other things that are happening, but we're looking at how do we inform employees, how do we align their roles, making offers, getting offer accepts, which typically could be like a closing condition of we need 80% of the people to accept because talent's a deal value driver. So we want to make sure we have the talent on there. Part of that is just going through that process which is very interactive and collaborative with the target leadership, our deal leaderships, hr because it's again a new language of how people think about roles, what your title will be. So thinking about how we deliver that message, prepare people for that to then bring them into our systems to be able to have them in our systems, do onboarding. Their offers are effective of all of those different key beats that are part of it, creating that day one experience, excitement, the challenge.

I'm imagining myself I was the CEO and you're telling me my title is going to change and this and that I got to adhere to this new governance system, maybe multiple people. I wouldn't be too excited about that. How do you sort of read that out or manage that expectations there?

It does vary per person. One that worked. I loved how CEO talked about it recently. He was basically talking to his team saying, you know what? But our life mission to deliver this isn't changing how we're going to go about doing it. The funding, the scale is going to change. This is why this is exciting. I think it's just more going back to the vision, what this does. And then when it comes to the personal stuff, you just have to have that conversation related to then what it means at Microsoft because titles everywhere just vary. So it's really what's the scope of role? What's the purpose? The pay may be better even though the title is different. It's just really getting them to understand the impact that they can still have within this role. And then if it's not for them, maybe it's not for them. We just have to have those honest conversations.

Is there positioning for growth post close? I did an interview earlier in the year with Tim Wentworth, who was the CEO of Express Scripts when they sold a Cigna. It was interesting because he joined Cigna for a number of years and ran a bigger combined division and made that point to me that a lot of people look at it as the end, but it's not. It could potentially be a next chapter for something bigger and greater.

As you described at the beginning, Microsoft's a big company. There's so much stuff going on. It just really depends on that person's what they want to do, how they like to work. Some people want to be in an entrepreneurial environment and we do have that within Microsoft. But it's more being able to do that within bigger scope and scale. But it does if it aligns to the interest. We definitely have opportunity for growth. We have opportunity for impact in lots of things. We have a leader that we're looking at right now that that needs to be attached to a team for six to 12 months. But there's a lot of other initiatives that then this person can go do. So I think it's having great Microsoft leaders being able to identify that, seeing that in the talent at least, hey, here's the path. If you want to go do that, you have to deliver and you have to have impact and you have to show up and all that. But there's opportunity abound based on what you want to do. But what's your style? Are you okay with being in a bigger corporation or is your identity really you want to to go get your own funding and do Another startup, it's all over the board.

Interesting. And you've had it where leaders and acquired leaders come in and they've really grown and flourished and end up running a much bigger business line.

We've had leaders that we've made more time down because there was somebody at Microsoft that they were coming into that team that they really took that role. They were doing a more broad and I think about like fundraising, investors, external, but a lot of that stuff. If you're fully integrated, that kind of parses out to different people and if you want to be more of that generalist, that can be a different role too. So I think it's just really, really having those conversations and understanding that. Because if it's not going to work for you, we also don't want to have you stay and not do anything or cause trouble or any of those. You name them.

Now this takes us getting ready for close, then post close. What are we doing there? What are the do's and don'ts of.

Onboarding leader really it's staying connected, helping them understand what's coming, what's needed of them and what's needed of them to their employees. We had an acquisition that there was a founder that left. That was the tie that binded everything. I don't think this other leader that was staying really realized that was the person that took care of all the behind the scenes, made sure that the strategy was communicated out, brought employees along and when that person left that, then it was up to that leader to take that on. So I think it's just as we're identifying that between like close and what we call Ms. Day, which is where they come onto their terms and conditions, they have access, all of those things, it's just really working through that. But they still have to run their business in that meantime too. So it's just really talking to them about what that is and how they're doing along the way. Because the pace of things is crazy. I think for acquired leaders, they go through this pace and then they get here and the pace increases. Really talking to them about pacing things. Often people think bring it on, we can handle it. And then you turn on the Microsoft switch and they are overwhelmed with more information and different ways of doing things. So I think it's just continuing kind of meeting with them, trying to figure out what is that pace and then what can be not only the pace at the beginning when they get to Microsoft day, but that next six months. And that's not our responsibility solely, but we're working with Leaders coaching and just trying to bring those to the surface to be dealt with. Because again, timeline's fast. People have expectations. We've obviously invested a lot of money. There's expectations for people to perform. But honestly, people are tired. So talking to them about how do take a break and still accomplish this because at that point you're not getting people at their best either.

For the choir leader who's in their corner from the buy side because you're interacting with them as an HR leader. Who else? Do they have any other friends at Microsoft?

Sometimes they feel like they probably have too many friends at Microsoft. When I think about that, we come with a village of people that are engaging with the target to make decisions. I think our IM or IMO lead, that kind of project manages everything across their meeting with the leaders, preparing them for what's to come, the expectations, the person that's. If this person's going into an engineering team like that, leaders engaged, typically they have a team that's working with them. We do try to identify even other acquired leaders of, hey, if you need somebody to talk to about this or in your business, here's another name. So they do have lots of friends and sometimes that can be good and sometimes that can be a lot. So it just is a matter of what works for people in that situation.

You're making all this sound way too easy. Kim, what is the hardest thing about onboarding a leader?

The pace, the transparency of decisions. Super hard. Sometimes they come into Microsoft, they have a dedicated team that works with them, and now they're part of a larger team and they get lost. All of it can be super hard. These are the only things that we do to try to get ahead of it. But it's all hard. It's all change. Like I said, I think the hardest thing I've seen is, is the pace to get to close. And even though it can be very beneficial financially, it's exhausting. And then it's like, all right now, here we go, let's deliver that pace. And that intensity, I think is just hard.

That is a fair point. The pace, the time of decisions, even.

The transparency of how do decisions get made. Like, I used to have a budget. Now I have to go through who to get a budget or how do I hire. All of those things are just hard.

That's interesting. So for them, it's being extremely transparent on how the decisions are made.

Even on our end too. Here you have a leader that's used to running their own show. And then wait, I have to ask to hire somebody like wait, what? It can be small like that. Understanding those decisions going in when they hit a wall, like they still feel like they, they can't say they don't know how to do it. That's really hard. That's hard on a personal level, let alone like then what you have to show back to your team.

How do you do that? How do you get a leader that just went through this whole M and A process and diligence can be brutal, especially companies. And then, hey, now it's time to really do the work.

It's, we have some systems and processes and meetings that we try to do but this is where I feel like really lucky as we have a lot of great Microsoft leaders that these teams are going into and they're the ones that are really being thoughtful about that. Not only the onboarding we do for M and A, their team onboarding, how they're spending time with them, how they're helping to shore them up to. It's impressive. Just even the last few deals I've done, the leaders at Microsoft that I've worked with, they get it, they understand it. It may still be hard, but they're working through the challenges. When they get identified, from very tactical to strategic and just trying out new things. I don't know if there's really a magic formula for it except for time, attention, empathy and curiosity to work through it.

Yeah, that's a lot about the right people working together. Sounds like people are pretty understanding when they know what the company's going to go through.

Yeah, it's still hard. I think you can tell people like hey, those are way too aggressive targets and you're asking people to work really hard, oh, we can manage this. And they get there like oh, oh yeah, that's going to be a couple of extra months delay. All of those things play into factor of deal models, expectations. What is the deal value driver? Are we really realizing it? We have scorecards. We may not be meeting all of our metrics but we're still invested in this deal, still feel like it was the right thing to do. It's just taking longer and to me that all comes down to the people parts and how people operate within that and be productive in a new system.

Are there any other tips and tricks or anything that, that we haven't covered that is like the must know about onboarding a leader.

Empathy, curiosity and just making it personal to them, asking them what's working, what's not and hopefully they tell you I honestly don't think there's a magic bold. Except for doing the work and having the conversations and then figuring out what's available to support that challenge for that person.

Does swag still have the same effect for leaders?

I don't know about with leaders, I will say it is surprising. A cup, a logo, all of those things that really actually people love.

I agree.

I would say even like when I've been on a deal and they've given me swag of that company, I have a pup that on the other side of this has the company name and I love it and it reminds me of working with them. So even on the other side I still like it.

I think maybe you gotta step it up for the leaders. Get em some branded like Gucci loafers or something.

Yeah, they get paid from their stock and consideration, but other than that.

Yeah, they want more. They gotta bring them into the culture. If you could do anything to prep an executive leader for onboarding, what would that be?

Be okay with? Not knowing and learning and just being honest about that. The more you can be vulnerable and also because I get it, it's hard because people are looking to you to know, but you're learning too. And I think just being honest about what's happening is super helpful.

Yeah, it's interesting being transparent about. There's a lot of unknowns to be.

Figured out and some of it's frustrating and hard and personal and you're going through your own change. So it's just giving yourself some grace to do that I think is always helpful.

Tim, what's the craziest thing you see in M and A? And I almost want to ask you, like, what's the craziest leadership onboarding thing you've seen?

There's so many crazy things and I think we've talked about how M and A is personal, it's business, it can be financial. So lots of crazy things come out because it's also compressed time frame. I will say one of the craziest but best things I've seen recently is a leader that stepped back and really took accountability for negotiations that were taking longer. But it was because of some things that they needed to do with their partners to negotiate. And typically when I see that happen, leaders want to compress a timeline, get to close because that's when they get paid. I get some of that. But he was so reasonable about, hey, I know this means that this is going to stretch out, but we're not not compressing any of the other key work streams to bring employees along to onboard to make sure we're doing the rest right. And to me, that was crazy just because I was so grateful that he saw the benefits of doing this right and taking the right amount of time to do it versus just trying to get to close where it's a big financial benefit to him.

It's always great hearing from you, Kim.

Well, hopefully this is interesting. At least some nuggets pulled out. I mean, I always learn something from the others.

So Kim, thank you so much. I enjoyed the conversation and learned a lot.

Yeah, me too. So thank you. Have a good day.

Here's to the deal.

Yeah, here's to the deal.

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