The M&A Value Leak

Most deals get a champagne toast at close and not enough attention after. That's backward, and it's where so much M&A value leaks out the door in the months that follow. Elissa sits down with Klint Kendrick, author and veteran of more than 150 deals, to talk about the part of M&A that rarely makes the deal model: the talent, leadership, and culture that decide whether the deal meets the value creation plan.

Klint and Elissa get practical about who you can't afford to lose and how to find them before it's too late. Klint breaks talent into three buckets and shares the hard-learned habit of huddling with functional leaders to surface the people a data room never reveals. They dig into why HR earns its seat by translating findings into dollars the deal model can use, why the moments that matter make or break the employee experience, and how monthly pulse surveys can catch problems leaders would otherwise never see. Klint also lays out what separates serial acquirers who build real human ROI from the ones who keep repeating the same mistakes.

What you'll take away:

• Retention starts before close. Sort talent and find them before the data room decides for you.
• HR earns its seat in dollars. Translate people findings into deal-model numbers on cost, overhead, and legally compliant headcount decisions.
• The close is a milestone, not the finish line. Deals lose value when the team celebrates signing and stops paying attention to integration.
• Design for the moments that matter and measure the transition. 
• People aren't coin-operated. Money motivates briefly. Career growth, communication, and being treated like they matter are what keep critical talent.

🔗 EXPLORE MORE

Connect with Klint Kendrick
 → LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/klintkendrick
→ Website: https://www.MasterYourMerger.com
→ HR M&A Roundtables (free to attend): https://www.masteryourmerger.com/events

Books mentioned in this episode:
 → The HR Practitioner's Guide to M&A Due Diligence: https://a.co/d/0aASp0eY

 → The HR Practitioner's Guide to Cultural Integration in M&A: https://a.co/d/074WQ8lk

Connect with Elissa Mahendra
 → LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emahendra/
→ LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-human-roi-7396293873473523713
→ The Human ROI Podcast: https://thehumanroi.buzzsprout.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So when I got my first opportunity to touch a deal sheet, I was laser focused not on, you know, is the financial diligence complete? I didn't know enough at the time to know whether the financial diligence was complete. I was laser focused on how are we going to do this deal really? Like, how is this going to make money? How is this going to create value? And I've just pulled that thread with me through now over 150 deals under my belt.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Welcome back to the Human ROI podcast. I'm your host, Elisa Mahendra. I created this space around a simple but often overlooked idea. People aren't separate from ROI in organizations. They're how ROI is created. I've spent more than 20 years in talent, leadership, and organizational transformation, and I'll tell you, I've seen what happens when companies invest in their people the right way and what it costs them when they don't. So on this podcast, we explore leadership, culture, and talent systems and how they either compound your value or erode it over time. You'll hear conversations with leaders, builders, thinkers, and change makers who are shaping the future of work. And we'll share some practical insights that you can apply right away. Because whether you're leading a company or you're building your own career, understanding human ROI is everything. And when you invest wisely, it pays dividends. So well, thank you for having me. I was joking with you before, but I think my it's worth sharing to my listeners that I've spent the last decade plus in an MA machine, and I wish I would have found you sooner. And I wish the LinkedIn algorithm and my network would have recommended the connection earlier because it would have saved me so much pain and so many lessons. But I'm excited to be sitting down with you today.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah. Well, that's that's kind of you to say. And at the end of the day, I think one of the things folks will learn is that I'm a rising tide lifts all boats kind of guy. And so I'm just excited to be here now so that together we can uh raise more boats.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Absolutely. And and as I started getting into the MNA space, culture change, PE, it's the same story. And I think what I was really excited about as it connects to the human ROI is so often that's not part of the equation. And that can make or break the deal and make or break the ROI on the deal. So I really am excited for our conversation. And I like to start all of our conversations with what is your origin story? How did you find your way to this slice of the profession?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Sure. So my first encounter with MA happened when I was really, really early in my career. I had a two-year-old and an infant at home. And I was working as a recruiter at the time. And the company I was with got acquired by an organization doing a roll-up. And they messed with my money to the point where I wasn't sure I was going to be able to feed my kids or pay my rent. Yeah, they, the pay mix completely changed. Guaranteed income suddenly became at risk. My at-risk income went down. And I ended up leaving that job because I wasn't sure that I could feed my family. And uh, you know, that's why many of us work. So that particular company had done a lot of acquisitions and they are no longer in business. At the time, they were the fourth largest software company in the world. And now they do not exist. And we can trace that back to a bunch of failed MA, at least in part. So uh fast forward the next job that I took after leaving that when I was a recruiting manager at what at the time was the third largest software company in the world, and they did an acquisition, and I found out that I was going to be bringing on team members when one of them called me. Somebody was like, Hey, I think you might be my new boss. And I'm like, I'm sorry, you you are who? Um, but it turns out that we had done an acquisition, and it turns out that his instincts were right. I did end up becoming his manager, um, but didn't find out about that from the company. I had to find out about it from somebody who found me uh on LinkedIn and reached out because he was the the way all of us are when there's an acquisition announced. Like, what's going on with me? Yeah. Well, resourceful and worried. Uh, so I took those lessons with me when I got my first real MA job, which was doing what I now call merger repair. Some folks call it reintegration. So the company I was with at the time had done a bunch of acquisitions, and then they had done a bunch of acquisitions into those acquisitions, and they needed to transform that line of business so it could become a new revenue engine for the company. So we had to go redo a bunch of integration that was good enough at the time, but not good enough to really transform the business. So that's before I ever touched a merger agreement, ever touched a term sheet, ever did any diligence. I had had these three experiences that were suboptimal MA outcomes that I really carried with me. So when I got my first opportunity to touch a deal sheet, I was laser focused not on, you know, is the financial diligence complete? I didn't know enough at the time to know whether the financial diligence was complete. I was laser focused on how are we going to do this deal really? Like, how is this going to make money? How is this going to create value? And I've just pulled that thread with me through now over 150 deals under my belt.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

I love that. And, you know, it's interesting because the more I talk to folks in on this pod, the origin story is something wasn't working and I decided to fix it, right? 150 deals is quite remarkable. Uh and you you have a repeatable process. So I will shamelessly plug that we have, you know, I've picked up both of your books and there's so many nuggets. So you have the HR practitioner's guide to uh due diligence uh in the cultural integration in MA. And you've done so much work in this space, and I I can't wait to dig into it. But you and I share the belief that talent, leadership, and culture can make or break a deal. So you shared a little bit about your origin story, but when, as you started to get into those 150 deals, when did you start to prove out that thesis?

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yeah. So fortunately, it was early on. And before I go into that, I have to say I absolutely love the fact that the books are getting used. I love that there's taps in there. That does my heart good to see that they actually are adding value to people's lives. So thank you for that. Absolutely. Yeah. So very early on, I think it was my first deal without the training wheels on, right? My mentor had done a really great job at getting me prepped, but this was the first time when Clint, this is your deal. Go, go lead it. We had ended up delaying the announcement by a day, which was a just a mess because it didn't close on time, or it didn't get signed on time, rather. Um then, so we have all these employees in a ballroom about to make an announcement, and then we have to send them home. So right there, that that was messy. But the real mess happened after day two, right? It it got managed overnight, and we brought all those employees back to that same ballroom to tell them, hey, your company's just been bought. And I'm I'm in the hotel bar having my celebratory beer afternoon, right? Just to be clear, I wasn't doing it at 10 a.m. We're having our celebratory drinks, and um, all of a sudden somebody came up and says, hey, we missed somebody really important. And it turns out that during the diligence process, we had not uncovered the guy that had written all of the source code. Just completely missed him. So we gave retention awards to the CEO, COO, CFO, completely missed the guy that if he didn't stick around, we were hosed. Yeah. So that was my wake-up call. And when that happened, and and part of why I love these roundtables, I picked up the phone, called somebody I'm still really good friends with, and I said, Hey, I just screwed up. Right. What do you do to avoid this? And she goes, first off, you know, screw ups happen. I'm like, okay, thank you. But secondly, she shared her process, which I actually share in the due diligence book, which is she does a huddle and she actually asks all of the functional leaders, who do we need to have to make this deal work? And so that's been a practice that I've incorporated ever since then. And there's some systematic ways of having those conversations that are good. But for me, it was also, you know, paying it forward, right? She helped me a lot. And now I can help other people by sharing that same message.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

I love that. And I want to pull on the thread a little bit there because I think a couple things you said, and I'll try to stay focused because there's so many things there that I want to dig into. I'm sure we could have a whole day talking about this. The huddle that she had that you incorporate in your book and you use as a common practice and you've evolved it is sometimes tricky because those conversations are so closed door. So, how do you balance getting the right people in the room that would know the information to give you? And with the deal team on the other side being truthful about who really are the people they want to keep versus who are valuable in the future state, right? I think there's always a balance there. So I'd love you to talk about that nuance.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Yeah, I think it's a it's a great call out. So when I think about talent, I think about a couple of different categories. And at its most basic, there are three types of people in any MA transaction that that we want to retain. Now, I'm personally a broad-based kind of guy. I feel like it's to lay people off if we don't have to. I know that it happens sometimes. I like to go in with an everybody should have a job coming out the other side of this process. I know that's not reality, but that's that's what I love to see when we can make that work. So operating off that baseline assumption that we're going to do minimal headcount synergies because we're buying a company that knows what they're doing and has good infrastructure, I then think about the key talent, the critical talent in three different buckets. So who's critical to close the deal, who's critical to integrate the business, and who's critical to operate the business? So when I think about who's key to close the deal, I did a deal in Germany years and years ago where the gentleman who founded the company was retiring. He wanted his son to have a job. Now, his son was a university graduate, like fresh university graduate, but he was not willing to sell his company unless Junior had a job. So right there, Junior, critical to close the deal. Yeah. Not critical to integrate, not critical to operate, but if he didn't have a job, this deal wasn't happening. So we found Junior a job. The second group, critical to integrate, these are the people that we need to stick around for systems combinations, they customer relationships, uh, you know, those sorts of things were that ongoing continuity, your cultural glue in your company. I was talking with somebody this morning who referred to them as your super connectors in the organization. So absolutely critical to integrate. And then I think critical to operate is self-explanatory with the caveat that it is critical to operate the future state business, not just the current state business.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

That's right. Because oftentimes it's being integrated into something larger, different, that will shape the future state of the organization. And you've talked about, you've written in your books, you've talked about um 70% of deals fail. You talked about the organization that you worked for that was the fourth largest, that is no longer in business. Why do you think that is? I mean, I know you have a point of view here, and I think they share that point of view, but can you elaborate on that a bit?

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Yeah, absolutely. So we do have a little bit of good news. That is that number of that 70 to 90 that's been cited for a very long time appears to be dropping slightly. So I've seen recent numbers that say it's gone down to 65, which may not feel like a meaningful difference, but moving from that 70 to 90, so let's call it 80, down to 65, that is a significant improvement in our outcome. So I think that's good news. It's also like if two-thirds of the time I get on an airplane, it doesn't pull away from the gate, I'm not getting on an airplane, right? So it's still not great results. So I think it comes down to I think it comes down in a lot of cases to leader hubris. Look, we we put really smart, really hardworking, really talented people in charge of companies. Those are the folks that become CEOs or business unit leaders. And they are used to being successful inside a certain operating environment. And during MA, it's no longer that operating environment, right? It's a very different way of doing things. And so a leader who is a Vunderkind at work is probably not going to have that same kind of success in MA without the reps, without the practice. That's right. So I think that's number one. And then the second thing, because I am a cynical Gen Xer, is I believe that our incentives are very mismatched in the world of MA. And by that I mean we will pop open the champagne, we will cut the cake when the deal closes. And in my experience, getting to close, it can be rough, right? There it's there's negotiations, the diligence process can be arduous. It is a lot of work, and we should celebrate it, just like we celebrate when a couple gets married. And maintaining that relationship, staying married, you know, having the kind of life that you want to live, that requires additional work. If everybody wanders away when the wedding's over, then we aren't doing anything. The analogy I actually prefer to weddings is buying a house.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Yes, I saw that in the book. I really loved it. I love the metaphor.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Yeah. So so when I think about it, my real estate agent for the house that I'm in has never called me to ask me how I like living here. Because it's not her job, right? Her job is to sell me the house and everything else is on me. Well, in MA, uh, that's the job of the bankers and advisors in a lot of cases, is to get to clothes and then they sail off into the sunset. But like, I had to paint the walls, I had to put the furniture in, I had to do all of the things to make this livable. And I think companies don't prepare for that. We don't incentivize them for that. And I I just think it's a huge mismatch of incentives to performance.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

I agree. And because I've often said in change management or any transformation, MA is a big disruptive change, like AI enablement, like org model changes, like operating model changes. And we celebrate the implementation or the close date, which is simply a milestone. And we're measuring the milestone, we're not measuring the impact or the adoption or so, so I love that analogy because I think you're right. It's check the box and move on to the next shiny thing, particularly if you're in an MA machine that's doing that over and over again because you have a small deal team that needs to move on to the next thing. So when you talked about the analogy in the book about the house, which I loved, I think so much of that in the integration part has to do with talent, leadership, and culture. And we know that as the people are on board. But I think oftentimes what's missing is the due diligence piece, which I love that you talked about that specifically and you talk about those vital steps in the diligence process. Can you elaborate on that piece specifically? Like how are you evaluating when information's in the data room and it's not complete? Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah, you you guess a lot. And they're educated guesses, right? So when I think about diligence, I think about how each diligence stakeholder has a different set of needs coming out of that diligence process. And as a functional leader, uh I try to address both major sets of needs. So need number one is is this thing worth buying? Right? Should we do this deal? And then question two, which is more the integration side, is how do we create value? And I think that uh in an ideal world, those are the same question, but they're really not on the ground. So with the confirmatory diligence, with the the deal diligence on should we do this deal or not, very seldom is HR gonna be a blocker. Uh in the deals that I've done, I've seen three that have gone away due to what I'll call HR issues. And I'm not convinced any of them were actually HR issues illicit. So one of them was an underfunded pension plan. And we just weren't gonna pick up an underfunded pension liability. So is that an HR issue or is that a finance issue? I don't know. And the other two were as we got into learning about the leaders, they just weren't people that we wanted to work with. Like it's like we love your company, but uh you not quite as much. And of course, you land that message a little differently. So is that really an HR issue? I don't know. So recognizing that that my contribution to diligence as a functional leader is usually going to be about things like cost modeling the future organization, understanding the differences in overhead rates, that sort of thing, that's where I think we start to build credibility and opportunity in the diligence process is by translating our findings into dollars that can go into the deal model so that the board or whoever's approving the deal has a complete picture and we don't end up with a bunch of headcount-driven cost overruns. Or alternatively, if there is a headcount reduction that's planned to make sure that we're doing it legally and compliantly, the number of times that I have had to tell leaders, hey, I'm sorry, you cannot fire your entire German workforce because it's against the law there. Um, you know, and that's been baked into the deal model is you're going to eliminate X number of heads in a country where you can't do that, you know, then I have to go in and model what's the total cost of separation or what's our time phasing look like. So so that's where the the corp dev people really build relationships with HR is when we speak their language and we give them the things that they want. Integration side is a completely different bit of math in my experience. And that's where we start to talk about, you know, key employee retention operating models. A lot of the things we think about in integration have financial implications for the deal, so it does become this iterative recursive process. So, yeah, at a nutshell, that's how I tend to think about that.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

All right, let's take a quick pause here. Because if you're listening to this and thinking, you know, I'm dealing with something just like this, you're probably not alone. Behind the scenes, I'm having tons of conversations with leaders navigating this right now. So I'd love to connect on LinkedIn. Tell me what resonated, tell me what challenged you, tell us what you want us to dig into next. I'm always open to conversation. All right, let's get back to it. And that's where I think it's helpful because so often in stories that I hear from other practitioners, that due diligence piece is missing because they may not have the internal talent in HR that speaks the language of deal models or speaks the language of finance or speaks the language of corp dev. So I love that you've kind of laid that out, particularly in the book around integration and really what are those steps and how are you looking at the matrices and things like that. If we can pivot now to the integration piece, and that's where I've spent most of my time in MA, is really thinking about the cultural integration. And there's some tactical things around whose systems are we using? Who, who, you know, how are we integrating the people? Are people finding out because they're looking on LinkedIn and saying, I think this would be my boss? So can you talk a little bit about kind of what you've seen in the integration process and what are some things that leaders should be thinking about as they're integrating talent?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

Yeah, absolutely. So uh there's been conversation in the world of HR for a few years about these moments that matter. And I think that's a useful lens for folks that are listening, you know, HR pros. What are the moments that matter and being ready for those? So when when I think about those inflection points, I usually think about announcement day. And by announcement day, I mean the day that the employees learn about the deal. Because there can be a couple of those. Sometimes the employees learn before the market, sometimes anyway. The day the employees find about the deal is the first moment that matters. The next moment that matters is when they get their offer letters. Now, sometimes they get that on announcement day. I've worked with companies where it's like, hey, congratulations, you've been acquired, you'll have your job offer in 20 minutes, right? I've worked with others where it's we'll have your job offer in six weeks. I've been with others where you'll not get a job offer because we're not doing anything with you. But when we communicate that, that is a moment that matters what happens to my job. Yes. The next one that matters is if you're moving people to New payroll and systems. And so what happens when they suddenly have a new employer, new insurance, if they're here in the U.S., sometimes a new leader. And when I think about that, Alyssa, I think that's actually the hardest part of this. We put a lot of attention into the announcement day because it is important, right? And we put a lot of attention into the job offers because they are also important. But when you think about when I started my last job, I was hired off the street. I didn't come in through acquisition. If I had a question about how to book travel, I talked to somebody on my team and I was like, hey, you know, is this allowed? What should I do? You know, and the same with my expense report, just to use a really simple example. Well, if I'm part of a hundred-person unit that's coming in, nobody knows the answer. We're all trying to figure it out together. So that figuring out the ways of working and really being part of the culture, that's a lot harder when you're onboarding a whole group of people that are used to relying on each other and yet nobody nobody really knows what's going on.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yeah. And I think that that's where I was so interested in fixing that part of the problem in integration. Because I think, to your point, do I know what I need to know to get my job done? And the periphery things that are happening in the organization as an employee. So that day one, week one, month one, and beyond experience kind of onboarding journey, the relationship with the manager and being able to help managers facilitate how to onboard an employee that was acquired, which is very different than an employee who opted in, right? And really helping managers understand what that looks like and what good looks like in that process, and then keeping them engaged, particularly if they have that waiting period that you talked about. Because that waiting period can be brutal for someone. Do I have a job? Do I not have a job? There's a level of mistrust, particularly if they've gone through it before in another organization and it hasn't gone well. So as you think about the ROI and for individuals going through the process, how have you seen organizations track beyond announcement day and go live or integration day, how employees are doing with the transition post-integration?

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Right. So I'm a really big fan, Alyssa, of pulse surveys. And I I believe that a good pulse survey should go out candidly once a month. Right now, different organizations have different perspectives on this. I think a good baseline is once a month unless you've got a reason to do it differently. And I believe that you should ask some consistent questions. I'm an IO psychologist by training, and so I've got problems with ENPS from a construct perspective. And there's probably other IOs out there that are booing and other IOs out there that are cheering that I said that. But it's useful, right? Managers understand what ENPS is, and they're used to seeing that's employee net promoter score for folks that are not familiar. And that's a one to ten rating, and you give that to everybody and you can track that over time. So that's a really nice indicator. And then I really believe that while those surveys should be confidential, if you work with a third party, they should be able to drill down into your different demography. So if you've got an ENPS that goes down in one department, you should be able to track that as well. So that's a good one. And then I think that it's a really valuable source of additional information. I've been changing how I look at surveys with the rise of AI. So in my book, I have a pulse survey set of 10 questions. I would probably write that section differently today. It may be a future blog post once I get a few minutes to pop uh out of the water here. But um, but today I would add a couple of open text questions that are things like, hey, what do we need to be focusing on with this integration? Right? What are you concerned about? What's going well? What victory should we celebrate? And AI will parse through that data so quickly right now that we can get thematic analysis. And again, look by group. I tell you, the number of times that I have seen something in a pulse survey raise an issue that we would not have otherwise been aware of makes them worth their weight in gold to me. And most serial acquirers, in my experience, have a really good way of getting those pulse surveys out if they have a mature.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that because in my experience, when you look at those who had been acquired and the ENPS, right, over time. And as long as you have an anonymity threshold and you're using a third party being able to drill down into department level or creating tags for those who had been acquired and being able to see how they matriculate in the organization and what their experience is, right, is so, so powerful. And working with those third parties who are doing that for multiple organizations and the stories that they've shared. And to be able to see the dips in ENPS be more shallow over time because you're maturing your process over time with because of the feedback. So I know there sometimes can be a mistrust of the process itself. And you mentioned serial acquirers. So can you pinpoint maybe a top three? I just like threes. What separates organizations who are building higher human ROI in the MA process to those who aren't?

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

What are the things they're focused on?

SPEAKER_01 27:45

It's a great question. Uh number one, they're actually focused on the question, right? They are asking themselves, how do people play into this equation? And I spoke with a another good friend of mine in this space as I was getting ready to do some work on leadership. And she said, if I had one tip to give to leaders, it would be act like you give a damn. And yeah, right, right. Well, and and what I realized in that was that it's not that the leaders don't care. It's that they have a hard time acting like they care. We're really good in corporate America about telling people what to think and what to do. We're not so good with the feelings part. And so leaders who show that they care, who act like they care, I think is the first step. I think the second thing that firms that do this really well have in common is that they learn from the reps. So they they have a process where it doesn't just become individual knowledge, but it becomes institutional knowledge. And in my mind, that goes beyond capturing lessons learned in a document that gets filed away and ignored. It means after every deal, get out your playbook and actually update your playbook with what you learned. Yes. And whether it was a positive learning, like, oh my gosh, this worked so well, let's keep doing this, or it's a, oh my gosh, that crashed and burned, let's maybe not do this. I think that you have to put that into your playbook so that companies go through waves of acquisitions, right? So when your company goes through a lull and you redeploy your MA team or let those folks go do other things, somebody's going to pick up that playbook in a year or two, and at least they can see what worked in that time in that context to give them a new start. And then I think the third thing that those that do this well versus those that don't do it well is they understand that keeping talent on, let me put it this way, they understand that people aren't coin operated. Right. So our answer to employee retention in most cases is throw money at folks. Right. And so we pretend that people are coin operated. And sure, money is a motivator to a certain extent. And we know from years of motivational theory that that wears out really fast. And so we've got to find other ways of motivating people, like telling them what's going on in their future, giving them career growth opportunities. It's those non-financial incentives that matter. And on top of that, if you're dealing with folks that have critical skills, like I did a data science acquisition a couple of years ago. And um, I actually tell that story in one of my one of my books, it was botched so badly because the leader wouldn't listen to the HR guy. And we lost half of that talent. And he was like, Well, why didn't the retentions work? And I'm like, what makes you think that the $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, which is a lot of money, is more than what they would get as a sign-on bonus somewhere else for somebody with those skills. And so when we treated them poorly, they said, you know what, I can go replace this money somewhere else. I don't have to work here. I got choices. And they voted with their feet.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

Yeah, I love that. And I think for for those who are listening who are in a CHRO or HR leader role who is at the table, and it may be one of the three things that you just said, and they've just learned that they're going through an MA, or they're in the process of diligence now, or they're in the process of they've announced in their in planning for integration. What is the thing they should do to preserve the value of the deal? Yeah. What would you say to those people?

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things. For a an HR person who is just getting to the table, regardless of where things are in the deal, I would say there's there's two key things. One, figure out who's who, right? Understand who on the buyer side and who on the seller side is really important. Understand where they are, understand their relationship dynamics because those are the folks we have to work with. And then number two, understand how this deal is designed to make money or do whatever the deal thesis is. So I think that leaders who know who the players are and build those relationships, and leaders who understand where value is coming from can then synthesize that knowledge and really make an impact.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

I love that. One last question because it was something that I wanted to pull on earlier, but I didn't get a chance to, and it's nagging at me that I just have to ask the question because we could sit here for a whole day. You mentioned roundtables. And I know that in addition to your work as an author and a practitioner, you also have created a brand around and a movement really around Master Your Merger. And you have these MA roundtables. So I'd love for our listeners to understand where the best of the best is sitting and what that looks like.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Well, thank you. That's that's kind of you. So yeah, we've stood up a bunch of HR MA roundtables, and it is basically an open forum for people who are interested in this space. So every month we have a topic, and either I'll present or I really prefer to bring in outside guests. And it's a mix of people who do consulting work as well as people who are principals inside their company, sharing information about a topic, and then usually we'll break out into small groups because roundtables are not just webinars. Roundtables are opportunities to network. And one of my stated goals is that you should walk away from one of our events with a new MA best friend. The person, like back at the very, very beginning, I said I picked up the phone and called somebody when I messed up. I want other people to have that same advantage. And if I can create the opportunity for them to do that, I want to. Yeah, if folks just want to go to masteryourmerger.com slash events or just masteryourmerger.com, they can find those roundtables free to attend. The only thing that we ask is that folks be in the MA space or, you know, plan to be working on MA soon so that they can contribute to the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

That's wonderful. Well, I will be sure to include that in the show notes for those who may have missed that. And I have so many more questions, but maybe we'll have a part two later. But I really appreciate your time, Clint. I think the way that you think about it, both as a practitioner, as a scholar, and an operator, is contributing to that 70 to 90% coming down to 65%. And so let's set a goal for 50% so we can see another 15% swing and we'll keep talking.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

I'm all for it. We we can do that together, you know, between the folks listening, between the folks that are doing this work, I think that's a great goal.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Absolutely. Thank you so much for being a guest on the Human ROI.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Thank you so much for investing your time with us here on the Human ROI podcast. If this episode gave you a new perspective, something to take back into your work, I'd love for you to subscribe, leave a review, or share it with someone in your network. Because this show doesn't grow by the algorithm, it grows through real dialogue. And if you want to keep the conversation going, I'd love to. You can find me on LinkedIn or follow along on my newsletter, The Human ROI. So until next time, remember, your people are not a cost center. They are your greatest source for value creation.