A segment of a talk (YouTube video) discussing the critical role of company culture—especially during mergers & acquisitions. The speaker emphasizes that culture often determines M&A success, cites personal experience with multiple acquisitions, and notes Adaptive Insights’ customer-success and team-oriented culture as a strong integration foundation.
We all understand the importance of culture. There used to be an expression that culture trumps strategy. So now I'm told by my team, it may not always be politically correct, but culture certainly is more important and is more important than strategy. I think Peter Drucker used to say, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And culture is what you want. It's the way you want your team, your organization to behave in certain circumstances. One of the things, and I think this is particularly true when we think about M and A, Culture is probably the most important factor in determining whether M and A is successful. I think I've been acquired now six times, four as a public company. I think on the buy side, I've been involved in probably more than 100 transactions. And if there's one constant in terms of the deals that worked versus the ones that didn't work, it really is about culture. So at Adaptive Insights, our culture was very much customer success oriented, team oriented. We value transparency, we value accountability, and the workday culture is very much aligned. And I think in the six months we've operated together, we found that that provides a strong foundation for the way we can operate our two businesses together. So I think your responsibility as leaders, culture is one of the most important things that you do.
