Sneak-Peek: Making Integration Successful from Both Sides of the Deal

I'm switching things up and sharing a phone call I recently had with Christina Amiri, head of M and A integrations Atlassian, and Steve Elliott, formerly CEO of agilecraft, who sold his company to Atlassian last year. It was the fourth time he sold his company. This is actually a prep call for our upcoming M and A Science Virtual Summit. I wanted to share it because the content is as good as any of our other interviews and also give you idea of what's to come at our conference. And if you like what you hear, share it with your friends, post it on LinkedIn. Tag me. Let's keep growing our community. Here's Steve explaining why the sale and integration of his company went so well.

Four acquisitions in. There seem to be a few key things that make them work and maybe a bonus fourth thing for the CEO role. So the first one is, I mean it sounds obvious, but it's culture fit, right? And so I think one thing, one thing that Agile working agile thinking does is it just in more open conversations, more collaboration. So there are, there are lots of examples of that in this deal. But for example, like some of the ideas about how the integration is going to go 18 months down the road, 24 months down the road. Like I knew going into this when certain parts of our team would be broke off and integrated and all of that was, was made really clear, right. So a lot of times you get acquired and a lot of that, you don't tackle some of those stickier issues up front. Same thing with terms of the deal, right? So one of the things that I was really impressed with, you're going through, you know, you're selling something you've spent a lot of your lifeblood to build. And it's not just the product, it's the people and, and the future for all those people. And you know, I feel like the, the willingness of, of the acquirer to let you talk to other people who have been acquired and to let you really open the kimono about how that's gone and the good and the bad and the ugly, that was all available. So I was able to ask other CEOs who'd just been acquired exact. And one of them was what, eight months into it and the other one was two and a half years into it. So I got a really good open picture and the fact that they were willing to let me have those open dialogues and they set those dialogues up for me was, was very reassuring. And then we had a lot of conversations about what hadn't worked with those and how we were Going to do a difference. All that happened before anything was done. And so that, that was huge. And something that the M and A team also did that just on the, on the deal making side that built a lot of trust, was just talking about how they were moving to publish the term sheet and put it out there for the world to see, which I think was a very bold move. But that all of those kind of things, just seeing that up front built a ton of trust. Right. And so the. I got a lot of, you know, I think I was exposed to, I'd counted it up but like 80 different people from Atlassian before we ever got anywhere close to signing something. So I built relationships with quite a few people. And so I was getting a good feel for the culture, I was getting a good look inside. And I think all of that stuff and the fact that we were able to do that quickly, I mean all of that stuff just kind of, to me that just kind of screams agile thinking. Right. It's not that we were doing sprints necessarily, but it was very open, transparent work, very collaborative. So all those things going in were very helpful. The other big one is product fit. And even if you have a good culture and good relationships, if you've got a product that doesn't fit well into the portfolio, overlap and all products are going to have some integration challenges. And we had some. But the product fit is a huge one because, you know, as, as you're, you know, as an, as a, as a founder and CEO, we've rallied the troops and done some big things to get to that point. And the worst thing that can happen is get you get bought and then see your product vision and all the work you've done kind of get downplayed or mismanaged or whatever. Right. I think we thought through that all in advance as well. And you know, it's definitely a transition. Right. Your product's not the only product now. So there's a lot of other considerations. I think product and culture fit are big. And then I think that very open, transparent way of approaching the pre work before the merger was done, before the acquisition was done, all those were key. And then I mean I got to meet just about all of the executive team, right. A couple, couple of them I met multiple times. There were a lot of things that were done just to, just to build trust and help me get a feel for if this was the right place for our people to land. Another interesting one there too is just on the financial impact for your people. Right. So see a lot of people who put so much work into this, you want to make sure it's a good outcome for them. So there's one thing that I thought that was different from this one than other ones I've been involved with was there was no earn out and the team, the M and A team was smart enough in my opinion. I agreed with it. But they were smart enough to not try to put an earn out in place that they said they don't do that. We talked about it and the more we talked about it and the more I thought about it in the past, you know, an earn out is a fantastic way to have bad feelings down the road because it's an anti agile pattern in my opinion because you can say, well, you can make it just about revenue or just about they're hard to design but they're always going to be flawed. And one of the main reasons is you want the ability to adapt and build the business together and try to drive the best outcomes for the company together. And if you've set some arbitrary goal that's going to drive how people get paid 18, 24 months down the road, you're just, you're almost always going to be at odds with, you know, the company that got acquired trying to do X, the rest of the company may have shifted and trying to do Y and they're not on the same page. So that was another thing I thought was wise that I think avoided a lot of conflict down the road and then I'll just keep it high level for now. And then the last one that's interesting to me is just for the CEO, I think what you're always trying to gauge is am I here to serve my sentence with my handcuffs and hand this thing off in the best fashion possible and then I'll be sent on my way? Or do they want me here, do they want me to have a career here? And, and most acquisitions I've been a part of, it felt more like the latter. So it wasn't that they didn't, there wasn't a good relationship. It was just like what do you do with a CEO if you've already got, we've got two CEOs, president, a full exec team, you don't need a CEO. So what do you do with that guy who's used to making all those decisions and being able to, you know, set a lot of the tone. So you got to give, you got to get. In my opinion, you got to give a CEO something pretty, pretty big to sink their teeth into and manage and let them Run. And I think Atlassian's done a good job with that as well. And I think that also goes back to that, running a flatter, matrix, agile company. And what I see with the other CEOs who have been acquired, they all seem to be, you know, they're still responsible for basically running a business unit and they're matrix then. And, and at least for myself, I can say I'm 12 months into this and I'm very excited about where we're going and what we're doing and I'm having a ball. And that is, that is not normal for me. 12 months in, normally. 12 months in, they're kind of suffocating your vision and your people are kind of half miserable and missing the good old days. And so, yeah, so that's, that's the high level for me. Just top my head.

Oh, I like it. I'm hearing a lot around the culture fit, transparency, the product fit. You mentioned the financial impact for the people. These are all really good points. Why'd you stay like 12? Yeah, because this is the dilemma. I mean, obviously they're incentivized to keep you, but even with financial incentives and whatnot. You know, I talked earlier about Nest, so I'm curious, you know, how come you haven't reached that kind of point?

Well, yeah, no, like I said, I think it's because I'm enjoying my work. Right. Could I go found another company and do something really interesting? Absolutely. And still have ideas every week on things to do. But I'm beginning to still execute on the vision we started almost 10 years ago. But I'm doing it inside of a much larger organism. But we're still agile, we're still getting things done, we're still shipping software every two weeks. It's actually even more exciting in a lot of ways just because of the flywheel that we have. So one of the reasons I'm here is I'm enjoying the work and the people and all of the people that I brought with me are having the same experience. And so. Oh, that's fantastic. That's the main reason. And as long as that continues, I'll stay. It's hard to predict two years out, but if it continues like this, I think I'll be here past my vesting. You know what I mean?

Christina, what's your view? How do you foster that you gotta have something.

I'm like laughing.

How do I make a happy CEO after the deal?

That's a lot of magic. You also have to have a willing participant. I mean, it's been interesting to kind of work very closely some of these CEOs, because it's this weird, like you're trying to build trust and relationships with them, and then they're like, who the hell are you? And why are you trying to be attached to my hip and get to know my business and all of that. So it's a really tricky relationship you're trying to navigate. So a lot of it is, I think, like, how it makes it work is like you just have to immerse yourself in their business, their people, their culture. Like, you can't be there to try and just be this thing helicoptering above them. You have to really feel what they feel, care about their problems. And I think with Jira Align, we had an opportunity to build that kind of strong, deep relationship, you know, from the start where I'm kind of like this cousin, this adopted cousin that comes around every so often. And, you know, I've gotten to know a lot of the team and that's really helped to, I think, need to be much more better educated about the business, where I can help be an advocate not only for Steve, but for his team in so many of these conversations that are happening in the company that maybe he doesn't even know about or just doesn't have enough time or energy to, you know, be represented in that. I think, you know, he and I reached a point of trust where, where he feels like you can be out there representing us, and I feel like you understand our priorities and have an accurate view of the world and, you know, kind of built that trust. But that just requires a lot of deep think investment in time, that communication and transparency is key. And I think a lot of that is just being set up with our tools. I think help a lot with that. Like just a whole mission of Atlassian and what our product set allows us, our product portfolios allow us to do, it kind of lends itself really well to that building trust and transparency and getting teams really well aligned. I think what was different about this one thing that we really tried to double down, and Steve doesn't know this because he doesn't have like that perspective from past wheels, is that we really try to double down on. On the people and change management piece of it. So that's why he got to know when parts of the org were getting realigned to, you know, different functional leaders. We put a very thoughtful, you know, change management and transition plans for everyone. He knew exactly all the headcount he was getting and he had the say of like, you know, what roles he was going to hire for, be able to give to other teams so that he could holistically kind of manage the design, you know, the whole kind of organization that was going to be supporting your line across the company, even though that didn't report to him. There's so many things we could point to, but Steve touched on a lot.

Of them and it sounds like it all starts with just caring.

Yeah, it starts with caring. Yeah. And I think they just brought a good attitude to it too. I think that was because they were agile. They were used to being open and transparent and that's a very big kind of cultural thing that you cross your fingers and you hope that you're engaging with people who are used to sharing and used to kind of what we.

Call sparring.

Our terminology for kind of hashing things out and brainstorming in real time. But they were game for all of that and that's what helped make it successful too.

That's a good point, Christina, because we kind of live this agile stuff internally. We fancy ourselves as being built for change anyway. Right. Like if a competitor does X or something shifts, we can adapt very quickly and we have, you know, startups do that. But that agile stuff, it plays really well into M and A. Like so if you've run a good agile outfit where people really embrace, you know, learning as fast as you can and being okay with looking at work and abandoning it if it's not working and being really ruthless with measuring results, if you take that into. And then if the acquirer and the acquired both have that mindset, as Christina mentioned, like spar through whatever comes up, things we have to solve for. It's just, it kind of feels more normal. You're used to, you're not used to everything feeling the same. You're used to things feeling like they're going to change all the time anyway. So it does make you a lot more adaptable to M and A. Christina touched on something else that I didn't. I was thinking back like one of the other acquisitions I was in, we had this. The other two we didn't, but I think, you know, we always had an executive sponsor, right. We always had some continuity from the, from the acquirer. For the M and A team to stay as engaged as they did and help make sure we were connecting all the dots. Like being fully embedded with us and being part of the team, that was, that was super helpful. Just because it's, you know, we're, we're a very fast moving company. So is impossible Coming in to know what's going on. So Christina helping us connect those dots for the first year has been really, really helpful. So that's, I don't know if that's an agile thing, but that's a, that's definitely a best practice thing that made it successful.

So.

One thing I want to make sure we don't get overly sugarcoated on this interview is say we're due to, like, a really broad retrospective about this whole integration. What would you look back and point out as ways that Christina could improve?

That's a tough one. If you know me, I'm not like a, I'm not always a glasses half full all the time kind of guy. Like, if it's not good, I'll tell you, this has been, I mean, it's been awesome. So I'm struggling a little bit. I'm trying to give you something.

Okay, let me try to rephrase that.

What were the biggest challenges?

So, the biggest challenges, because we're, there's, there's some challenges because we're agile. So I can talk about that. So if you think about, if you think about like a tech company and how they operate, they tend to be, they tend to be a bunch of, like a lot of small organisms that are all out there experimenting and making, you know, trying to figure things out and making changes. I think one of the challenges that, that we have, that we had to, that we had to work within, it's just as, as a company that's growing as fast as we are, I think over half the people that work here weren't here 18 months ago. That kind of, that kind of growth, right? Our products are growing, our customer base is growing. It's all growing so fast, and it's all moving so fast. Trying to line up product visions across all of the products we have now that we have a large portfolio of products and being one of the new products coming in, just trying to get aligned across all the products wasn't easy. And so we're still working on that. But that's, that's really not. I can't blame that on the acquisition. That's just a hypergrowth company. But it is, it is a side effect of Agile. You can become so agile that, that it gets harder to stay coordinated. Right. So if, you know, if everybody gets on the same page a couple times a year and more of like an old way of working, kind of stodgy way of doing it, at least you get on the same page twice a year. The other side of that paradigm is Everybody's running so fast. You never get everybody on the same page completely. And so we're, we're more towards that other agile end where we're just running so fast. It's, it is a challenge to, to line up a product vision sometimes. But again, a lot of the, a lot of the reasons for that pain are success. It's just the symptoms of, you know, they've built a very successful company here and one that we're part of now. And so some of it's just hyper growth.

Yeah, that's interesting. Balancing it out with integration and facilitating your growth.

I'd say that would probably be one of the areas where we say that Agile, where it goes too far, could kind of work against you. Because I know in the early stages of the deal, talking about that, you know, kind of deal rationale, the early integration thesis, it was, we purposely didn't want to put too much of like the product strategy or technology roadmap written down and like set in stone because we didn't want to quote unquote, you know, kind of disrupt the creative process, disrupt the Agile process. So we said, okay, let's just kind.

Of ring fence it. We know directionally we need it to go here, but we're going to kind.

Of leave it alone and let the teams figure it out as they learn more about each other and the product.

And then it just took longer than we had expected and was harder to get that alignment.

So that's probably the one where we're, we're probably do you know, lessons learned on that of like how could we have changed, kept that agile spirit, but still really gotten to more decisions and alignment quicker.

Got it. Is there any specific like key agile techniques that may be worth highlighting that you think was really helpful?

I know one thing, it's just with our leadership team, if you look across how many leaders, senior people, like, you know, I was a CEO, I'm not, you know, I'm a couple levels down in the organization and what's cool about, because we're very transparent, very agile. I feel like I'm plugged into a lot of the financial decisions and things that are going on that a lot of, in a lot of bigger companies I think would only be at the top executive level. You're basically your executive team. There's a lot of trust in, more trust in an agile, in an Agile environment where a lot of that information is shared down. It's a more open way of working. And I tell you what, that builds a ton of trust because even though I'm several rungs down the ladder. I feel like I know what's going on and plugged in a lot of times where the discontent or the trust comes in is you feel like, you know, you feel like you're expected to lead but you feel like you don't have all the variables. And I usually know what's going on and I understand the top level objectives and how we tie into them and the company does a really nice job of how transparent we are about what's happening and why. That's one of the, that's an agile thing. I see. I just noticed the more agile you become at the, at the top leadership levels, the more information flows and that's, that's really important for the, for the people out there trying to, you know, trying to get the work done. So that's, that's my number one thing that I've seen. I'll let Christina throw one in.

I like that. Transparency to build trust.

Yeah. And especially at the leadership level, like the top down part is the part that's so helpful in my mind.

That's a great one.

Anything else Christina, in terms of like maybe sort of little tips, techniques agilish or not that you thought were really helpful?

I don't know if it's agile specifically but we, we've tried to have like a good balance of we use okrs in Atlassian and also coincidentally that's a big part of kind of agile craft in down deer line in what they're helping kind of companies really understand is like how that strategy kind of ties to execution and kind of investment of people and time. So I think we've taken a lot of that, not only literally like in the tools but also just how we're measuring kind of progress and staying aligned across teams. So that's probably a more tangible, we could, we could talk about is just how do we use Confluence, how do we use jira? Align, how do we use Jira, how do we use, you know, Trello, our own tools to help us kind of take those agile practices to life and in the tools that we give the teams to work together.

That's cool. I know we touched about that on the interview that we started around just distributing the information and getting it to people and I guess that ties back in the transparency too.

Yeah, it's because we're trying to help companies become more agile. Like we have the playbooks, we have the tools, we have all of that stuff at our disposal. So the way we use it internally definitely helps us move faster. Think think and think in agile ways. So applies to M&A plus integration plies to, you know, how we go to market with, with our field ops and our products. It all, it all. It's really helpful to have the tools and the playbooks that we're trying to help our customers with because we have, you know, it builds empathy both ways, is what I would say. We kind of understand how hard it is too. Cause we're trying to do it ourselves. So it's a good. It's a good technique.

Hope you enjoyed that glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes. If you haven't already, make sure you're signed up for the MAScience virtual summit. You can do so by visiting mascience.com until next time.