Laurin Parthemos | Beyond the Dress Code: The Outgrowth of Culture in an Organization

On this week’s episode of M&A Masters, we sit down with Laurin Parthemos to talk about culture. Laurin is a Principal at Kotter, a company named after Dr. John Kotter, the world’s foremost change expert. Kotter’s approach to merger & acquisition integration focuses on culture and people first.

Laurin says, “Culture is more and more seen as that differentiator within an industry to say we have a strong culture where people want to work.” 

Listen as she walks us through:

  • Three ways to acknowledge (and counter) the survive or thrive mindset of change and help an organization move forward 
  • The key to the path forward when integrating organizations with varying cultures—she’ll share a case study of the positive results they achieved (with long-time rival companies) 
  • The monumental shift in the talent pool—what’s behind it 
  • One of the most overlooked things most miss when planning integration and catalysts for forward momentum
  • And much more

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

TRANSCRIPT:

Patrick Stroth: Hello there. I’m Patrick Stroth, trusted authority in executive and transactional liability, and President of Rubicon M&A Insurance Services. Now a proud member of the Liberty Company Insurance Broker Network. Welcome to M&A Masters where I speak with the leading experts in mergers and acquisitions. And we’re all about one thing here, that’s a clean exit for owners, founders and their investors. Today I’m joined by Laurin Parthemos, Principal of Kotter. With offices on both coasts, Kotter helps organizations mobilize their people to achieve unimaginable results at unprecedented speeds. And I gotta tell you it for a marketing thing, that’s a lot to unpack in one sentence. So there’s a very efficient intro right there. Laurin, welcome to M&A Masters. Thanks for joining me today.

Laurin Parthemos: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. 

Patrick: Now, before we get into Kotter, which is a major consulting firm at the forefront of change. Let’s just start with you. How did you get to this point your career?

Laurin: Absolutely. So I like to say I kind of grew up in the banking industry. So I started my career off in one of those typical but no longer really exist big training programs, working on the lending side. Transitioned into M&A myself doing fundraising for startups, then working with the tier one investment banks, all their processes and operations and how to actually optimize and be efficient. And really, throughout my entire time, through each and every one of those phases within the industry, I really just found myself scratching my head as to why everything was so KPI focused and why things weren’t working, and really leaning on my previous role. 

And what I was doing back in my college days, which was being a sailing coach, and really trying to motivate people and teaching people how to continue going, despite obstacles that you’re seeing. And I really realized that that human element in terms of change, and how you’re dealing with the day to day is just missing in so many organizations. And it’s that unpredictable factor that really can make or break an organization. So when I was looking for my next opportunity, I came across Kotter and that light bulb moment happened, where I just realized, oh, my gosh, I’m not the only one who thinks that. 

And not only is there a whole body of work behind this, but it’s operationalized. And it’s actually out in the industry. And it’s not just theories talking about potential research, but it’s actually happening in the real world. So I’d say the short and sweet is that I just kind of was trying to find my home in terms of people who understood that change isn’t just about financial success metrics, that if you don’t have that integrated body of work underneath it, that takes into consideration all factors, then you’re not gonna be successful.

Patrick: Well, I think that change is at the core of M&A. Alright, and the objective with a good M&A strategy is it’s it’s a situation where you’ve got, it’s not company A buying company B, and now you’ve got something, okay. It is one group of people agreeing to partner with another group of people with the objective that look, the whole is going to be greater than the sum of its parts. And because we’ve got people at the core of this, okay, that’s changed, people are resistant to change. And so it’s always fascinating to see how you address that. 

A lot of organizations just, you know, they they muscle through that however they can, and you know, they’ve got that attitude. Well, you know, we’ve gone through this before, and we’ve done it before, we’ll do it again. And you know, suck it up. Let’s go. And it’s just so counterintuitive to what’s really happening out there. And so now we come to Kotter. And it’s Kotter with a K which was formed after Dr. John Carter, Kotter, excuse me. And he’s a leading expert in leading change, not just change itself, but leading it. And so talk about Kotter, the organization and what kind of services it’s about on a macro level.

Laurin: Yeah, absolutely. So the foundation of our business really was John Kotter’s body of work. He’s a former Harvard Business School professor that was doing extensive research around leadership and what makes organizations successful. And in the 90s, he published an article called Why Transformations Fail. And it was 10 years of research, over 100 organizations studied. And realized that 70% of those organizations actually failed some metric that leadership had established in terms of what does success look like in terms of this transformation. Can be whatever budget win over time. 

But the ones that were successful had this foundation of what he called the eight accelerators, and essentially these various different pieces and it’s not steps that you can kind of check off like a waterfall method but various different pieces with an ecosystem that when activated, means that you’ll be more successful. And so what we do is actually bring those eight accelerators to life when we partner with organizations, and especially in the M&A field. We work a lot on the post deal integration side. Really, really a function of that’s when people start thinking about culture, it’s not because that’s when we should be brought in.

Patrick: They’re not running into the obstacles yet. You know, coming together, and then once you’re together, okay, now what? So, yeah.

Laurin: Yeah, absolutely. So what we like to do and what really sets us apart, I think, is that we partner with organizations. We do not come in as a consulting firm and say, here’s our plan. Here’s what the research we did here’s statistics, plop the plan down, leave and call it a day. We work directly with people from across the organization. So that diagonal cross section there all the way from senior leaders, to those junior people on the ground to come up together with plans that will actually make a change successful. And when you’re thinking about that integration process, worst case scenario, you’re going to have a group of people who just feel a sincere sense of loss when they go through. 

And these integrations, because realistically speaking, you’re dealing with a body of people. And this isn’t the leadership, but the actual employees on the ground doing the work and making the organization successful, that have just had their futures determined for them. They no longer have control, and they’re no longer able to have any certainty around what’s going on. Because it’s just a flash Band-Aid rip most of the time. And so that if you read our latest book that came out this summer, Change, we talk a lot about that in terms of the survive and thrive mindsets. And announcements like that really activate that survive. 

So you immediately have a rush of cortisol running through your body. You’re not able to really think strategically anymore as an individual, and you really are just in that fight or flight mode in terms of how do you do things. So we try to not only acknowledge that that is a realistic possibility, but actively counteract it to make sure that people aren’t thrown into that. But come up with ways for your own organization, to move away from that into that thrive mindset where you can actually think creatively and be more future oriented in terms of how you can be successful.

Patrick: Well it’s interesting, because you talked about the people, again, we’re falling back on this people are at the center of this. But it’s interesting, because there are there are other shows out there where they interview firms that merge together, entrepreneurs that sold their company and merged. And one of the common questions comes up. When did you tell your people? And and a lot of them agonized over that because you know, what was the outcome? Obviously, you’ve got that fight or flight, immediate response, particularly when this process has been going on for months. And then the announcement comes to the to the team, like within days of it happening, or in some cases, hours of it taking effect. 

So you’ve got that natural thing. The other thing is interesting, I appreciate this is that what Dr. Kotter did was he was looking if integration didn’t go well, well, rather than than looking at the ones that failed, which is easy to do, try to pull out the what was common about the ones that succeeded. Because that’s the formula to move forward rather than, you know, Monday morning quarterbacking, you know, others of those deals. So that’s, that’s a unique thing. And this whole issue now where you guys have and again, we’re still macro, but the science of change, and there’s an awareness there. 

And I think as more understanding happens, that’s fantastic. And that’s leading, you know, we’re Kotter’s kind of leading, leading the change. You know, the the group on that. One of the things that you and I had spoken about before, and we will get into this a little bit more, but it is a big, you know, kind of California, wishy washy kind of thing is is a topic of culture, and how you know, Kotter, one of the things that you guys look at is, you know, the importance of it. And it’s beyond this whole thing of well, these guys dress, you know, have a dress code these people don’t. It goes way deeper than that to talk about culture a little bit for me.

Laurin: Absolutely. And I will say that one of the things that is really important is that we don’t deal with culture in the sense that that’s the only thing we care about. But that’s how we differentiate ourselves. Because there’s all we obviously care about business practices, and what are the strategies and processes behind something. But culture should always be tied to that strategic objective. And there should always be that measurement going forward. It’s just as important as how we do the work. It’s not a fun little tier off to the side. So when we think about culture, it’s really the behaviors of that organization. 

So how are decisions made? How are you communicating with people? If you’re a people manager? What are those practices around actually growing the organization? How do you handle professional development? What are your policies around whether it be feedback or how you’re actually just going about the day? Are you a nine to five, only organization? Do you work outside of those bounds? And it’s just all those tiny little behaviors that then culminate into this larger topic of culture. And it’s not that kind of wishy washy California, as you mentioned earlier, but it’s all those little tiny practices, how much does your vision come to life in your day to day? Or does it not? If it doesn’t, that’s okay. But it’s more of an acknowledgement of how that actually is brought in. And understanding the foundations of that is really what’s important.

Patrick: And the issue with culture also is, as you and I’m stealing from you from an earlier conversation, but it’s the importance of bringing joy and higher achievement in. This isn’t some esoteric, you know, we’re gonna have a company look, and this is it’s really, you know, performance, this enhances performance.

Laurin: Absolutely. Culture is not just a piece of paper where someone wrote down, like, we are a technology focused firm, where we love collaborating, and then it gets thrown into a drawer and never spoken of again. Culture, whether it’s defined or not, is how people within your organization actually operate. And that’s the key of success and knowing how does that actually work? And if you change some of these levers, in terms of how do we slowly migrate people into one direction, or maybe quickly in another, in order to pull levers to improve performance for the organization as a whole.

Patrick: And the thing in there, Kotter’s, not alone in this, you’re just at the front of the line on this, but this culture really is trying, organizations are trying to see if they can quantify it, if they can measure it, and then see if they can harness it as a strategic advantage. And and I think, you know, the dynamic of the workforce now is an unmistakable element of the outgrowth of culture. Let’s just talk about that where we had the scenario in the banking industry.

Laurin: Absolutely. So you’ll see it easily in the financial services industry, where what used to be that exciting field of investment banking, where you had all the graduates wanting to funnel themselves in and fight for those top tier positions in banks are no longer going towards those at the same rate. They’re going towards FinTech, those various different organizations, that could be startups, they could be larger at this point, starting to get some extra funding and are really expanding. But it’s, the hallmark behind it is really, because the cultures are very different. 

There’s the thought process behind having to work those long hours for the same amount of pay. And the same amount of incredibly high or the hierarchical demoralizing, what can be seen as demoralizing for this generation, environment, versus one where they can create their own path, and they can start defining things for themselves is much more exciting for these generations. So there’s a huge shift in the talent pool in the younger generations wanting to find something new and culture is really at the heart of it.

Patrick: But with culture it’s also, it’s not just, you know, retaining talent and keeping people but you’ve got to be aware of it when you’re bringing one force to join another force. And and you’ve got to know the potential clash of cultures there. And you’ve experienced that. Talk about that real quick.

Laurin: Absolutely. So we had one organization that it was two competitors, who were top in their field. Unfortunately, I can’t give the actual names. And I would love to give actual details, because the details are just 10 times more impactful, but when we anonymize it, you can’t really see that full picture. But two, huge top of the industry, competitors formed into one. Merged together. And as we were going through their integration strategy, and what really needed to come out of it, we realized really early on that if we were going to make a proof point of this integration in terms of how to be successful, we needed to generate wins early on. And I would say that’s fairly typical across the board. 

You always want to be generating wins to boost morale and create that snowball effect of moving forward. And the way that we were going to do it and be most successful and most impactful was to get the sales teams working together. Because if the sales teams could work together, who were rivals and did not like each other, if we can get them on the same team collaborating and actively working as a unit. Then that makes the proof point for the rest of the organization to say you know what, they can do it, why can’t I. So what we did is after we brought them together, we really allowed them and created a space where they can decide what that collaboration looks like and decide what their path forward is. It’s like I said, it’s not us coming in and detailing out high level plans, it’s working with the organization to create that for them. 

So what they decided to do is that they were going to sell one product together. And it did not matter what industry you focused on. So they were selling products across a variety of different sub sectors. And they all went back and said, you know, what, by the way, have you seen XYZ in the market? Really exciting. I know, it doesn’t apply to you, but maybe look into it. Might be of some interest. And through that, and all of them deciding, we have a goal of we want to sell X amount of this product, we’re all going to do it together doesn’t matter who does it. Let’s do this as a team. It ended up being by far the largest selling product in that industry.

Patrick: So you get the results right there. I just, you know, when you go the uber hyper competitive forces, okay, now they’re forced to work together. Okay. If they can work, then everybody else can. But what really struck me about this is not only I mean, it’s easy to see also, because we’re in marketing and sales, we appreciate this. But it’s also the, you didn’t take this universal approach, where okay, we’re going to change everything. Okay, you’re just let’s just get, prioritize a couple things and like you said, get some wins and moving forward. 

I think that’s what happens is, everybody appreciates that, as they’re bringing on onboarding services and so forth, it’s just get those little wins to move down, let’s get those first downs and move on. We don’t have to have the big long pass because a lot of times that could delay things. And then people are just there again, in that space of they don’t know things are changing. They don’t know how it’s factoring, but they don’t see anything happening. And then you get nervous there. So I really appreciate how you guys can break that down.

Laurin: Absolutely. I would say one of the most important things that often gets overlooked in terms of these plans is that it’s just saying, okay, we introduced you guys to each other, we’re done. High five or something along those lines. And it’s culture and the people integration isn’t taken into the same level of detail, as you see technology integration, or process integration, which does need to be considered at a high level. And if you think of Roger’s law of diffusion, when you’re regarding innovations. 

It’s the same principle that you need to start with a group of people who are willing to accept that change, create those early wins and proof points, because as you create and generate those small wins and create momentum, you’re creating that rationale for the people who are more resistant to change and wanting to step back to say, you know what, this group did it, they were successful, I’m bought in. And then when you get those people who are partially resistant to change, you start getting the people who are very resistant to change, and you start making a movement that way. It’s not forcing it, but it’s creating proof points of success around that entire process,

Patrick: Define or give me a profile of your of Kotter’s ideal client. Where are you looking as the ideal client where you can make these changes?

Laurin: Absolutely. I think, realistically speaking at Kotter, we consider ourselves generalists, but what we really like to focus on are those calcified industries. The ones who haven’t necessarily changed yet, and are looking for that new generation to be that catalyst to move forward. And that’s really where we’re going to see our most success. I would say, anyone who is in a leadership position, where they are already having these thoughts and feelings around this is I want to change differently. I’ve done this time and time again, without success by going through the traditional methods. Let me try something new. That’s going to be our target audience. Because if we have someone within an organization who is willing to try some of the things that, from a traditionalist standpoint, sound a little off the wall, but are proven time and time again by both research and outcomes from our clients, that they do work.

Patrick: This doesn’t happen unless you get buy in from the top, obviously. Now, Laurin, you mentioned calcified industries. Give us an example of a few others. You mentioned banking, what besides banking would be calcified?

Laurin: Absolutely, I would say healthcare as a whole very much in that wanting to transition phase and wanting to accelerate phase but hasn’t necessarily gotten there yet. Very much government entities, still working on how to actually become as efficient as humanly possible within their structures. You’ll see it in higher education who are still very slow moving on various pieces depending on the cycles that they’re in in terms of their semester. You’ll see, and you do see it across the board. And you also see, you’ll see it in manufacturing at times and supply chain. It’s very much, I would say a universal piece for all the ones that aren’t talked about in the news necessarily on a regular basis, I would say the rest of them are still looking to really accelerate.

Patrick: Talk about the onboarding process, how long it takes and things like that.

Laurin: Absolutely. So onboarding for us, when we first start working with a client, we take a couple of months to actually do that discovery work. And discovery isn’t just kind of sitting in the background, reading some old documents. Yes, we do do that we need to do that and do our research to see what’s actually happened. But it also can consist of doing culture change surveys, and actually figuring out what that network within your organization looks like. And how ready is your organization with what are the general sentiments in your organization. Going through and doing stakeholder interviews, and not just interviewing leadership, but interviewing various different people within the organization who are doing the work to really understand what that landscape looks like, and then going into an alignment session to really define out what is your big opportunity in terms of this. 

And that’s not saying it’s going to replace a mission or vision statement, because they do not. They supplement it. Because an opportunity is a window of time, it is a strategically held short term opportunity where you can charge towards that and everything that the organization does, should support that opportunity in terms of achieving it. And that opportunity will then flow into your mission and vision and your strategic objectives that you want to achieve for the 10 year vision, or the 30 year vision depending on what you have. 

Patrick: Gotcha. Now I appreciate, Rome wasn’t built in a day. So this isn’t, you know, an overnight fix. But matter of weeks, months? Ballpark?

Laurin: I would say months. It depends on after we go through that discovery phase of a few months, we go through and define custom plans and roadmaps for an organization based off of the level of need. If we’re doing a one off, you’ve purchased an entity, great, you’ve got the target company, you need to integrate it in much shorter timeframe, then building out a conglomerate where someone purchased a ton of various different entities. And now you’re trying to make one holistic unit. So really depends on what landscape we’re dealing with. I’d say about a year timeframe, we really like to work through organizations and do a lot of this work on that shorter end, not because it takes that entire year long necessarily. 

It depends on the organization again, but more so embedding behaviors, take does take time. So you can have that switch. And if you read anything on habits, you can quickly change but then you can regress back if those behaviors aren’t reinforced. So it’s doing, making sure that that repetition is there and making sure that that reinforcement is there across the board in terms of how you incentivizes there in order to make it as successful as possible.

Patrick: Gotcha. Well, I think that this is important. And one of the things I just pulled from you is that this isn’t just limited to strategic acquirers where they’re going to make an acquisition here or there. You could literally have this for private or private equity clients where they have multiple, very diverse portfolio companies. And although they don’t work hand in hand, the various portfolios, intermix with each other that often, many PE firms are trying to do that. That’s one of their strategic advantages is seeing how they can take, leverage strengths and to overcome weaknesses among the portfolio companies. We want to get, you know, our culture, not just within the PE firm of the investors, but within the portfolio across the breadth of the portfolio. And so I could see that being something that would be very, very helpful.

Laurin: Absolutely. It’s something that we’ve been talking to clients about in recent years. And I would say, if you think about venture instead of PE, for example, just making all of those bets and saying not all of them are gonna pan out, we’ll have a couple of successes that are runaway successes to pay for the investments that don’t necessarily work out. But how can you actually structure your portfolio to complement each other? And actually work together as a cohesive unit? Not necessarily from going as formal as a joint venture, creating those agreements, but how can you actually work your portfolio to maximize and create cultures where it is okay to collaborate with each other?

Patrick: So, I mean, this is great, because it’s not just culture isn’t just micro, here is macro on the other side, and that’s a great place where you can be brought in because you’re proven at that level. You’ve done it at that level as well. Laurin, we’re having this conversation just after first of the year. So we’re all getting used to change on writing 2022 now on the dates instead of 2021. So it’s going to take a little while for people to do it, but we’ll all change and then we’ll be sitting in 2023 but what do you see going forward either with Kotter or macro change M&A? And what do you see for the coming year?

Laurin: I would say, in general, and this isn’t necessarily for 2022. But it’s been a general progression in recent years that there’s more acceptance around what’s considered the quote unquote, softer side of deals and culture. You’re not as frequently getting that eye roll. When you say culture in a boardroom, as you might have 10, 15 years ago. Where people were like, oh, it’s culture, okay, wonderful. Like, that’s not necessarily happening anymore. And, for example, we were working with a firm and within a year, they actually referenced culture at a 22% increase in that one year timeframe after we started working with them. 

And directly targeted in their annual report, the reason behind their incredible success during the pandemic, was because the culture that they had fostered beforehand. And culture is more and more seen as that differentiator within an industry to say we have a strong culture where people want to work, and especially when you’re starting to think about the great recession. And as people are leaving organizations, when you’re doing an integration, as we talked about a little bit before doing things to people and activating that survive mindset, you have a more vulnerable employee population who is more quickly going to have that thought bubble of, if I can’t define this for myself, and I no longer have control, why don’t I leave? 

And it’s already prevalent, but it’s even more so in these target companies. So something to absolutely be aware of, as you’re going through in the next year of how do you really retain the talent and the culture of your target, and integrate some of their best practices and their culture into the acquiring company, and create the best of both.

Patrick: You mentioned the softer side, the two biggest developments in the last couple years. You’ve got ESG and the awareness of that. And then culture is hand in glove with that. So I agree completely with you is that going forward. Laurin Parthemos it’s been a pleasure having you here. For our audience members who are interested in this, how can our audience members find you and Kotter?

Laurin: Absolutely. So you can find Kotter on our website at kotterinc.com. I have a lot of resources there and various different articles or background research that we’ve done. You can find me personally at laurin.parthemos@kotterinc.com. I will not go through the trouble of spelling that you can easily look on your podcast page. Check out the show notes. It will be there. And then you can also find me on LinkedIn. I’m more than happy to speak with anyone who’s interested personally.

Patrick: Well great. Laurin Parthemos of Kotter, thank you so much for being here today.

Laurin: Thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Patrick: Great.

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