The Best Way To Handle The First 100 Days After An Acquisition

This panel, as part of the inaugural EtA Forum, takes a close look at how a searcher should approach their first hundred days after closing with a business.

The panelists – Johnson Wang, Alex Simmons and Nikita Gossain – have all had successful searches and are now busy managing their businesses. They share some excellent insights about what they learned, what surprised them, and the mistakes they made along the way. One key theme comes through the panel, and you’ll hear it clearly as you tune in: It’s critical to give yourself time in the new role.

The temptation will be there to rush in, make a big presentation, and get started on making changes immediately, but this would be a mistake. Taking the time to get to know the business and teams, while promoting stability and a “business as usual" approach will allow you to get a better understanding and vision for the business. The panel covers the whole gamut, from how to handle the need to let people go, to sharing responsibilities with your partner in search. There are also some helpful insights on handling change management.

This is because searchers – who often come from private equity or M&A backgrounds, need to quickly transition to their new roles as CEOs and people managers. Naturally, searchers are going to be thinking about what happens when they find that perfect business and close the deal. For those that are doing it for the first time, however, it is a monumental and challenging career step.

Being able to listen to the successes and mistakes that others make is an incredibly valuable resource, and that’s what this panel provides.

Connect with Johnson Wang: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsonjwang/

Connect with Alex Simmons: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ansimmons/

Connect with Nikita Gossain: https://au.linkedin.com/in/nikita-gossain

What we discussed:

2:37 Introduction of the panel by the host, Johnson Wang.

7:17 The panel kicks off with a discussion about “day one” of a search journey.

10:30 The discussion now transitions to the first 100 days, and what each person on the panel did to prepare themselves for that first few months.

14:27 Johnson shares the three key priorities that he and his partner had for the first 100 days.

15:49 The next topic for discussion was the role of the new CEO – what their day looks like and what the shift is like from searcher to business manager.

19:06 Johnson asks Nikita to describe her thought processes around the timeline for highly strategic activities (like bringing on a new CEO and communicating her vision for the company to customers and employees).

21:38 With the panel being made up of people with private equity, consulting, M&A backgrounds, the discussion then shifted to the sudden need to manage a company of people, and how an acquirer can approach this challenge.

24:36 The panel starts talking about aversion to change being one of the big challenges they came across early on in the business.

26:10 Letting employees go is one of the more difficult challenges that a new owner faces – the panel discusses the best techniques to handle this.

27:38 The panel now discusses how a partnered search divvies up responsibilities between the new owners.

29:34 The panel shares their most positive and negative surprises of the entire process.

32:49 Q & A with the audience.

44:37 Pete provides a final summary and analysis of the panel discussion.

Key quotes:

Nikita: “I don't think people have massive expectations on day one. They want to get to know you, they want to know that their jobs are not going to get cut immediately, and otherwise there's an open mindedness on day one.”

Alex: “We’ve seen in other examples in search that people come in with a real plan for the things they want to do in the first 90 days. I didn't have any of that, but was very conscious that it was important to invest in understanding the business early and make sure that you understand the people and the relationships. We had some objectives, but nothing like a big PowerPoint of the wonderful things that we wanted to get done.”

Nikita: “You want to get some quick wins in those first 100 days. You want to stabilize, and you want to show them that for the first six months there's no change coming, jobs aren't on the line, and so on.”

Johnson: “It is hard to sit there and try to not make decisions and not act on things. People often will look at you and expect you to act. So it is much harder in practice.”

Nikita: “In terms of strategic thinking, we were claiming that we were one of Australia's most innovative companies. And that was true at a time, but sort of hadn't been for about 10 or 15 years. So there was a need to go back and strategically think about everything, and go through our mission, our vision, our purpose, our goals, our values, and so on. That was actually really well accepted, and the employees took to that.”

Alex: “Culturally, the business had a very passive owner for the last three to five years, and it now had a very active and involved CEO who wanted to take the business to the next stage. So we needed to have the teams start to come on that journey, and some were there, which was great, but others were not yet. So I would spend a lot of time with the teams building projects around growth.”

Nikita: “Having to let someone go is painful, but it’s for the good of the team. It’s unfair to them and to the person that’s not thriving in the environment to keep them on. So it’s something that you’ve just got to do sometimes.”

Alex: “What I didn't appreciate on day zero or minus one was, there's more time for you to get into the role than you think. I probably should have prioritised personal things, like getting comfortable with the rhythm of being CEO, rather than charging in there and trying to get on with everything.”