6 M&As Later: What this CPO has Learned (Nichole Viviani, Chief People, Culture & Change Officer at Global Payments)

Speaker A: I think as far as sort of what we as leadership teams can do to help settle some of that uncertainty is I just keep going back to over communicating. Right. The more uncertain things are, the more leaders have to lean in and in the absence of any narrative, people will find their own. And so I think sometimes leaders wait to have all the information to get the white smoke and say, here's the decision we made and don't spend enough time keeping people filled in on the context on what they're thinking about and ultimately why it matters. So when it comes to things like AI, just as an example, you know, being clear with the organization around, how do we see eia, right. What do we believe in when it comes to AI? How do we think humans and machines should work together and talking about some of that stuff up front, right? Helping people come on that journey because again, you know, if people understand what you're trying to achieve, I think the extra effort, you know, the morale, they come because you know what you're doing and you know, how you contribute to a, uh, bigger goal.

Speaker B: You're listening to the Modern People Leader podcast where we go behind the scenes with today's top HR leaders and work experts. We talk to them about how they've

Speaker C: gotten to where they're at, what they

Speaker B: do every day and what they see coming next for the future of work.

Speaker C: Hope you enjoy.

Speaker D: Nicole, welcome to the MPL podcast. How are you doing?

Speaker A: Thank you, I'm doing well. How are you doing?

Speaker D: Great. So you're just saying you're jet setting. So thank you for prioritizing us with like global travel. You were in London, is that what you mentioned before?

Speaker C: We hit record.

Speaker A: My youngest had his 21st birthday. So big week for us. 21st birthday and college grades all in one week. So yeah, big week for family.

Speaker D: Oh my goodness. Well, we start every conversation the same way. We call it good news stories. We all start by sharing a personal work related good news story. And so we prefer for our guests to go first. So Great.

Speaker A: Well, I think I'll choose the personal because it's a big week for us as a family. So as I mentioned, my youngest turned 21, which was a bit of a rite of passage for him, but also for me. Like he's my youngest, my youngest child, my last baby. And then today we got his grades through, he's just finished university, uh, he goes to university in the uk in Surrey and he got a first, which is I guess the US equivalent of an honor. So. So that was what he was targeting. But yeah, it Feels pretty good to have all three kids through university. I feel very old at the same time, but proud moment, proud family moment, proud mom this week for sure.

Speaker D: My God, Daniel, what do you. What do you have? That's all amazing and I can relate to it.

Speaker C: You're a few years behind Steven, but I know I'm getting close. Yeah.

Speaker B: I'm also gonna go personal.

Speaker C: So for the last, like six, seven months, we've been casually, you know, looking at homes in a neighborhood that we really like. And our criteria was very strict. And so, like, as of Wednesday or Thursday last week, we hadn't seen anything that we liked for the price point. It's just hard in the Austin market. And a house popped up that we loved that was in our price range. And we were like, screw it, let's do it. And so on Friday, we put an offer and it was accepted. So we've now gone into our option period. And so, um, I'm m feeling all of the emotions. I'm a little bit nervous and scared for big change, but I'm also. And so, yeah, I hadn't even shared that news with Stephen yet, but yeah, it's so exciting.

Speaker D: You mentioned, you mentioned this on Friday, possibly because we actually, Daniel and I do these, uh, leaders. We call them L10s. It's like our executive. Our executive cadence. And you mentioned in that, like, we. We saw some, Some mutual. Some friends, former colleagues friends. And we talking about this.

Speaker A: So. Wow, that's big news.

Speaker C: Fingers crossed.

Speaker A: Congratulations.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: That's a big. That's a big deal. When you find. How close was it to your perfect list?

Speaker C: It was like, if there were 10 things on the checklist, I'd say it had nine of them.

Speaker B: That's great.

Speaker C: Almost perfect.

Speaker A: That's great.

Speaker C: But we haven't done the inspection that's today. So who knows? Something might pop up. But fingers crossed.

Speaker D: Go next. And I'll keep it a personal good news hat trick. Uh, so we'll go three for three, personal. My good news is that. So I have two teenage daughters, 14 and 16. But I'm also like, back in the game on the other side. And I have a 6m month old boy. And the 6 month old boy, Joaquin, has officially moved to his own room. I notice. I didn't say sleep. He's not sleeping in this room, but he wasn't sleeping in our room either. So it's just nice to have moved to his own room and. Which has also required some processing some emotions because that's like a big thing. But everyone's fine. Mom's fine. Joaquin's fine. Dad. Apart from like not having all my mental faculties because of sleep deprivation. Dad's okay also. J.K. j.K. Well, that's enough about us. Nicole, like, this conversation today is about you and the great things that you've done in your career and more recently in your work at Global Payments and which we'll talk about here in a sec. I call this the first segment, though. This is the Brene Brown question. Like, walk us through your story. Like, tell us the journey that ultimately led you to you becoming a Chief people and culture and change officer. Sorry I almost left that part out, but that. That's a huge remed and I'm sure it took a career to get to that point and so walk us through that journey. Sure.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I think to start with the kind of the core of who's what makes me me. So I grew up in Hong Kong, but I've lived all over the world, in Asia and Europe, in the US Lots of different countries. I think, you know, part of my growing up and the way I saw the world inclusion, how teams come together, how any challenge can be solved if you've got the right minds and you've got different perspectives, solving the challenge was something that was very kind of near and dear to my heart. So I actually started my career in commercial and I spent about 5, 6 years in commercial leadership, kind of moving up the ranks there. Loved commercial. I think it gave me such a great grounding in what at the core, most businesses do. But after a while of doing it, I realized that actually what I really enjoyed the most was kind of seeing people perform at their best and seeing people, you know, reach their full potential. So made a bit of a, at the time, slightly risky career move of taking a sidewards move into an HR team and started working in the people function, or as it was called back then, human resources. Some people still call it that now. I like the people function, but kind of learned to cut my teeth across the generalist space. Spent time in reward and experience and recruitment. So did most of the different parts of human resources sector wise. Spent time in retail and technology, a little bit of time in insurance and then a lot of time in payments. So to start my kind of journey to global payments, Specifically, I joined Worldpay right after they were carved out of RBS bank back in 2011. And at that point we were PE owned and we were really growing the business. And within a short period of time we had grown it and IPO'd and listed on the London Stock Exchange. And I remember that was such a proud moment for all of us. About two years later into that, we got acquired by a company called Vantiff in the US and merged with Vantif to create what was then worldpay. But we kept the worldpay name, but it was Vantiv and worldpay together. So started working there really on the international side and sort of bringing the two businesses together, bringing the culture together, bringing the org together and the people together. Picked up a lot of change stuff in that as well because M and A and particularly large integration seem to have become my thing. Not intentionally, but it's evolved that way over time. So did that. And then about 18 months into that deal both companies combined got bought by FIS. So it was the sort of second deal within an 18 month period. Change fatigue is very real. And it was at that point of time. And so I guess at that point I started thinking outside of maybe just the more traditional sort of people space into change management and into sort of culture and Org and how all these things start to come together. And from that point onwards I always kind of did, I guess a little bit sort of HR roles, thinking about how all these things come together because you know, culture is what gets me out of bed in the morning. And I think that the problems to solve there are pretty much endless. And a lot of times we use process or other things to solve what are really cultural problems. And um, so those are the things that keep challenging me. So yeah, after a while I actually left fis, went to do chief people officer role with another fintech company in private equity. I was away for three years and then I heard that worldpay was spinning off again, going back to pe. At that point I felt like, you know, I'd been invested in this journey long enough, I needed to see it through the next stage. So I came back, kind of regrew that business again another 18 month period. There's something magical about those, that 18 month number. When it comes to Worldpay, I think uh, we announced that we were going to merge with Global Payments. So back in a listed environment now, uh, working for Global Payments, working on bringing the orgs together, working on, you know, how do we evolve our operating model, how do we stand up one culture and one company. And I think going back to the successful things this week, I mean by the end of the week when it comes to thinking about putting our leadership teams together, we've almost totally combined at this point and we're five months in. So I think that's a big achievement when it comes to combining leadership teams.

Speaker C: I don't think I had a chance to give Stephen the quick, like, brief before we jumped on this, but I feel like Stephen's going to have fun riffing on today's conversation. Similar, but very different background for Stephen in the world of M and A. And so I'm excited to get to that. But before we do that real quick,

Speaker B: let's talk about global payments.

Speaker C: I personally had never heard of global payments, but Fortune 500 company, you guys are huge. So for people like me, a stranger,

Speaker B: how would you describe what global payments does?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny, when I first joined worldpay, I had no idea what worldpay did either. And I think that's the magic of payments. So if I had to say it in one sentence, uh, we power all of your payments. So whether you're buying something online, whether you're buying something in a store, if you're paying in a restaurant, if you're paying through wallet, if you're paying through, you know, your phone, nowadays the watch is, is the new thing. You know, the likelihood is that we're powering at least two of those payments that you make a day, if not more. So, you know, our purpose really is to kind of drive business growth, but also to enrich people's lives by making that payment experience as seamless and as effortless as possible.

Speaker D: We're going to jump right in because there is a lot we want to cover and typically we have a. We can run over, but I know we have. We need to get you out of here on time today. And so I was trying. It was like you just walk. Walked me through a, like walk down memory lane. I worked on an HR M&A team at Goldman Sachs from 2005 to 2007. So this is pre financial meltdown when banks also pre Dodd Frank. So when banks could act as hedge funds. And I remember looking at payment companies and like the bank was. Goldman was obsessed with, you know, they loved business models where like you can scale revenue, make money on money type of thing. And so I was like googling all the names that you just walked us through, trying to remember if any of those were some of the companies that we looked at. And so I want to zero on the 18 month comment you made because 18 months does seem like the de facto like transformation timeline. Like we need to do this in 18 months. 18 months is in. It's not less than a year. So it's like psychologically feels like okay, we got a little, a little more time, but it's not that much more than a year. And you know, the joke was, I remember with change, like, oh, we'll just hang out long enough and there will be another transformation. Like, we're not going to finish the last transformation before. There's probably another one that we're going to need to look at. And I also thought about one of the first things I had to do in my sin in M and A was like, uh, run an analysis on, you know, mergers and acquisitions. The likelihood of success, or actually the opposite, the likelihood of failure. Because some shocking stat, it's like 80%, 80% plus of M, M and A transactions fail because of the complexity. Like there's just so much involved with a, uh, merger and acquisition. And so you've been through a slew of these. And so I want to just start like really high level, like in your mind, like, what are the ingredients for like, successful change in kind of this M and A environment? Like, like two, three. Like, what are kind of the things that you really look at first when you assessing? All right, do we have a shot at this or not?

Speaker A: Yeah, look, I think when you think about bringing companies together, you mentioned that failure stat, um, and that there's a stat out there as well. Complexity is a big one. But one of the other ones that I think is often overlooked is actually culture. So, you know, what are the differences between why the companies do what they do, how does work get done, right? What matters, what topics rise to the top, the accessibility of leaders, you know, the things people come to work for? I think there's often not enough done, either in some of the large integrations or with smaller tuck ins. I would say it applies for both. And what happens is, you know, you apply the playbook, you apply the model, and then you lose some of the juice that made it what it was, right? And you lose that special something that you were trying to acquire in the first place. So I think, um, alongside sort of complexity and there's just so much to do in managing all of that change. I think culture is just so important and being really intentional about how you're going to address that. Right? And there's no right or wrong way. But being clear about what it is, what the risks are, and how you're going to tackle that, I think is so important. I think the other thing, to your sort of change point, I think too many times nowadays people tag transformation as, uh, something that has a sort of a start net end. For me, you mentioned the, the 18 month period. And as you said, I've been living it for, you know, the last 12 years. So for me, transformation is really at its core about continuous improvement. And I think when you're bringing companies together, particularly where you're trying to bring maybe a merger of equals, thinking about things as how do we collectively combined as a new team, transform and continue to improve the way we work, it is a better kind of rallying cry than like how do we plug one company into another one? Because there's a lot of ptsd, I think, out there associated with the word integration. And when we think about sort of transformation, again, there's this kind of thought that it has a start and an end point. And so people are always looking for it to end rather than it's really a mindset. It's about thinking about how do we work together better, you know, how do we build the best OP model. And OP models always evolve. And so that's the way that we're approaching it. And I think my learnings through going through some of those previous deals, I think I can point to each of those deals and say we did that really well. And you know, some of the others that were learning points for the future, I think, um, the complexity point is really important. And part of that is just being really clear with people from the get go about priorities. Right. Because you have two different companies coming together, people have things they've been working towards. Most of the time they are rewarded and recognized for delivering those priorities. And all of a sudden it all kind of goes into the air and you've got to start again. So as quickly as you can, being able to align people around a combined set of what matters most and what people can do to contribute that and how their job will play a part, particularly if you're going through org changes or restructures. That clarity gives people focus if they know what they need to deliver while they're trying to figure out what is my role going to be in the future or how is this change going to impact me.

Speaker C: And so you said oftentimes you can lose some of the juice of what you were trying to achieve in the first place. When you think about, you know, some of the integration work that you've done, where not only were you able to keep the juice, but you were able to squeeze more of it and it felt like you were amplifying what was great about that company before. Is there a specific example that comes to mind for you? Like one integration that you've worked through where you're like, man, like our team completely nailed that.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I need to recreate that same energy the next time it happens. And of course it's going to be different with every integration. But I'm curious if there's one example

Speaker B: that comes to mind.

Speaker A: Yeah. Again, I think if I think through each of them, there are things that I'm just really proud of and the way that the teams came together and tackled them. But I think at the core being curious enough to ask the right questions would be, you know, the key for me. Right. Because I think particularly where maybe one company is larger than the other, there is a bias there just to sort of. And a speed to saying, hey, we're bigger so we're going to do it this way versus actually getting underneath that and saying, hey, what are you guys great at? Right. What are the things that you're most proud of? What are your things that are just, you know, innovative and uh, are driving the business forward that we can take into this and make the way we do it across the whole company. And so I think there was an integration that I did. It was actually with a company called Explore Technologies. It was while I'd left worldpay and came back. And that was probably the first one where there was something really great because we were in Covid and so, you know, most of the countries that we were in were in the middle of lockdown and we wanted to launch a new brand, we wanted to launch new values and unite all these cultures across the world. World. And we were geographically spread all the way from the U.S. you know, Europe, APAC, all the way around the world, all different time zones and predominantly everybody at home. So, you know, I think the communication and engagement model that we were able to pull together into something that was, I think a really, really kind of world leading event, all digitally done, all broadcasted around the world, interactive, where different teams can come together, was at its time something really cool. And that came about, you know, through speaking to both of the comms teams on either and just having an idea session just to say, hey, how are we going to do this? Right. And we put the sort of speed thing aside and said, tell us about how you'd approach it. So that was one, I think the welcome day that we did just a little while ago at Global Payments of bringing Global and worldpay together. It was a similar site challenge. We had a, uh, but that one was a bit of a mix. We had a virtual audience and an in person audience. And as I learned, you know, That's a little harder to manage because if you're just talking, you know, out to a camera, that's one thing. But if you're engaging with a live audience at the same time, it's even more tricky. And so we took the principles from the other one and kind of redefined it. Some of the experience that fed into that with what we gave people, what remote workers got versus people in office and, and we made it even better. And I could talk to similar ones in other integrations, uh, at worldpay, but I think it really is about understanding what each teams do really well and being really open minded about what comes out of the end of that rather than sort of saying we're going to plug one one thing into the other. But always with that continuous improvement in mind, collecting those ideas of the things that company that has been acquired or that you're merging with does really well. And taking that as the gold star going forward.

Speaker D: I want to bring it back to culture because that was like, you're going back to your response earlier. That was like the first thing you listed as like things that you look at or assess. You know, going back to my story like the way that we did the research is I went to a Hewitt M and A conference, the uh, conference board. It was another big conference organization that did an M and A thing in New York. And one of the things that I'll never forget was like the importance of culture. Like I think there was a broad recognition even back then that culture is really important. And a lot of these fail because of a failure to understand cultures or like mix cultures. But I guess what was equally shocking to me was the how often culture is misunderstood. And like, you know, in my experience it is uh, like a super nebulous thing you ask different CEOs, like, to some CEOs culture is like, well, at least in the last growth cycle was like ping pong and cold brew and like fun things optimizing to fun at the office. So people come in and work their tails off. You know, that's not how I view culture, but I share that to like illustrate. Like there is a very, there are pretty differing views. And so how do you in your experience rally leaders behind like a unified view on what culture is and really what we need to be focusing on when it comes to these change efforts?

Speaker A: Yeah, now that's a really good um, observation there. I think, you know, at its core culture means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And so understanding to your point around why it Fails sometimes it may be that it's that ping pong game or you know, the Friday quiz that people have. I would put those things into the bucket of kind of rituals and traditions. And I think that often the rituals and traditions are some of the things that get missed. But alongside that, you know, there's so much more that feeds into culture. The way decisions get made is a huge one for me, right? If you have one company that tends to be very sort of top down and another company that tends to be very bottom up, and you put those two together, even if they're not not sort of on the scale, say they're both somewhere in the middle, that you're gonna see that live, right? You're gonna see that jarring. And when people come together, they go back to those rituals and you know, traditions and theirs doesn't work anymore. And at that point a lot of people are left feeling like a round peg in a square hole or the other way around. But you know, they feel like I don't fit, right? And so I think again, back to the asking the right questions, understanding how things work. There's lots of different diagnosis surveys you can do. But just even just recognizing that people are on their own journeys and that we're all coming from a different place and that we have good intention can get you through those early days of sort of norming and storming and understanding what that is. I think some of the other things that sort of play into culture which are a little more nuanced and people don't always understand is I think everyone will have company values, right? But some companies will have, you know, values that are on the website and we talk about them and maybe they're hard coded into a couple of things. But you know, I think where culture really comes to life is when you say what do we as a company stand for? How do we as a company behave and what are the things that are just non negotiable. And then thinking about how do you embed those things in everything that you do. The way you hire people, the way you reward people, the way you promote people, you know, but also how decisions get made, your leadership development programs, there's a lot of things that are cross company that have to connect in order to feel one culture. And I think one of the things I've also seen with cultures is particularly companies who have grown through M and A. It takes a long time to truly unite a culture, right? It's not something that happens overnight. It's probably a three year journey. And so if you look at say the history of global payments, you know, these 18 month stinks are on the global side. They used to have more of a confederated model where there were different companies that operated within an overall umbrella company and there were a lot of subcultures. Right. And so recognizing that that was what it is and that it's going to take time and being clear on the things that are just core to who we are and how we work and what we believe in and how we behave versus allowing, you know, regional cultures to grow or geo cultures to grow or different lines of business cultures to grow, there can be nuance, that's healthy, but you've got to be clear on what are the non negotiables, top of house that are things that we all sign up to. And at that point I think that's where you can, you know, bring bottom up, top down, enable leaders to have the right conversations with their teams and then let the culture grow organically but not without the framework. Otherwise that's where it just kind of gets lost.

Speaker C: And so what I've heard so far is everything starts with asking the right questions. And so I imagine there's like this discovery process where you're almost doing a learning, you know, a listening tour to, you know, learn about the different rituals and traditions to figure out how decisions are getting made, to understand the hiring process, the promotion process, all of these different things. And then once you've done this full assessment, you're then having like this big welcome moment where you're trying to, you're initiating, you know, what's going to come next. And I think you said that that was called the welcome earlier.

Speaker A: We called it a welcome. Yeah. Where we did. Yeah, just what you said. Like we did a lot of listening before the deal. And that's where I think you can get ahead of these things, right, is there's pre integration planning and when you plan for the culture stuff in the same way as you would plan for the tech stack, you know, or other things, then you have all that diagnosis and you can go out and say, you know, this is where we've landed and it's something that looks like we've come together and everyone can see something of their own versus, you know, here's what we created earlier in the back room.

Speaker C: And so this is great. I want to keep going like step by step. So you have this welcome day. And on this welcome day you mentioned that there are some principles that you've taken from past integrations that work really well and you've tried to incorporate that as much as you can into the most recent ones that you've done, you know, with welcome Day. So take us into like, what does welcome Day look like? Like, what are you presenting to people? Is it a full day? Is it like a couple of hours? Yeah. Give us a behind the scenes.

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Speaker A: uh, mpl so the last one we did when we brought Global Payments and RolePay together was, I think it was a couple of hours of broadcast. It went out live around the globe to all of our offices. There were a couple we had to record for time zone reasons, but it was streaming out live. We had a live audience here in Atlanta and it was Cameron Brady, our CEO, and myself. And we had some of our board come in as well. Just to sort of share, first of all, why are we bringing these companies together? Creating that clarity in the beginning is so important. Back to the priorities point, right? So what are we now as a combined company looking to achieve? Why does it matter? Right? Why should we care about it at a human level? Um, we also shared the purpose and the values that we had through that kind of listening and research co created together and our kind of short term. What matters most right now? What were our objectives for the team for the first year and coming together so that everybody could rally around those objectives. So it was a mix of sort of passing on of information, setting clarity around what was important, what people could expect. Because the change management point starts from the beginning, right? People don't know how the change is going to affect them. And as humans, I think we like change when we're driving the change and we like it a lot less if we're not driving it or if we don't know how it's going to affect us. So over communicating clarity, even sometimes when you don't have it, just to say we're not there yet, but when we are, we're going to come back to you. And doing that regularly is just so important to over communicate. So within those first two hours, you know, it was a mix of communication, of setting clarity and also celebrating, right? Celebrating what both companies had done to get to this point, celebrating the great things that both companies were bringing into this new co and getting teams working together. I think that's the other thing. Like you know, you can send out an integration playbook but being able to get, I don't know, a hundred people together and not knowing who was wearing what badge is quite magical. Seeing the teams come together just on a human level and connection, it takes a lot of that sort of fear or scariness out of it because you realize that the people you're working with on the other side are predominantly just like you and you're all there to accomplish the same thing, right? Which is to make this a better company to work for and to service our customers and do a good job. So that was welcome day.

Speaker D: I used to joke that the integration playbook and plan was like out of date as soon as we sent it out. And obviously this is back then before Async work and everything was more real time than that. But I think there is something to say that the only constant is change. And I want to talk a little bit about. So you shared with us how create this shared vision for the future. Like I think that's how you phrase it, but essentially how we're going to merge these two organizations into this newco and there's going to be this, all these better outcomes. And what I found in my experience is that people are very good at understanding like their jobs, the realm of the impact as it relates to them and the work that they specifically do. But sometimes it can be hard to like, like zoom out and understand how that contributes to the big picture and then even more so like when you zoom out, even Further and now I'm um, trying to conceive how my impact not only relates to this company that I've been working for, but to this new thing that isn't quite, you know, it legally and technically it exists. But like culturally we're still working toward, we're still working toward that. And so in your experience, what are some of the ways that you've helped like at, at scale. And we're gon talk more about scale here in a second. But like how do you help an organization zoom out of like the blocking and tackling that I do on a day to day basis and kind of find some space and agency to like, you know, ideate like and align myself and get inspired by kind of this bigger vision of what's to come.

Speaker A: Yeah. And look, we're 27,000 people across the whole world. So you know, that is, that is a challenge that feels very real every day. I think you never totally crack it, but some of the things, things I think that you can do early days, which again, you know, my playbook comes from having done this many times and having some successes and also going that didn't work. We need to try something different. And I think bringing more minds into it gets better every time we do it because you get new ideas. Right. But one of the things we did this time, which we didn't get to in any of the previous times, and I think it really did make a big impact was something we called goals before roles. So when companies are coming together, and particularly where it's two large companies merging, you usually then go through an exercise of sort of picking leadership team of the combined company. And you know, so people see the leaders above them changing or going through change or experiencing change. And so I think sometimes you have to over index to fill that gap that might be created. So if the leaders are going through change, there might be a bit of a void there in being able to set objectives for the team and to play that anchor point between what do I do every day and why does it matter and how does it connect to, as you said, the bigger picture. So what we did this time was we went a little bit heavier than we have in previous times. Where you know, I think in previous integrations we would have just said here are our objectives for the whole company for the first year. And we would have shared that. This time we actually went through an exercise of, we shared that. But then we actually got each of the executive to follow a full cascade in putting the objectives of the entire organization to roll up to these four things that we said were most important that allowed people to connect at whatever level through the org they were in, their jobs and their goals to what we as a company were trying to achieve. And it created a lot of clarity at a time where maybe the leadership didn't have as much clarity because they were going through, you know, a process of, you know, selection and alignment around a new operating model, new ways of working. And so we, I guess, provided a little more framework than we normally would, allowing people to connect. And I think that made a really big difference. And I've had that feedback from people, particularly people who were in a position where maybe there were two jobs before and now there's only, only one. And that comes with a lot of uncertainty. You know, that comes with a lot of change anxiety when you're in that space. But knowing these are the goals that I've been given to do, and this is how I prove that I'm great at what I do. Gave them the ability to focus on what they could control versus some of the other things they couldn't control around them. So that sort of full company wide. And as I said, like 27,000 people. I'm really proud of this because I'd never done it before, I'd never been successful. But we got up to about 98% of people having that level of goals and they're recorded in our, in our system. And I think that the reason for that was, you know, it was a void people wanted to be filled. They wanted to be able to have purpose and focus at a time where otherwise they would have had a level of uncertainty.

Speaker C: Um, and so before we keep it moving, I. Well, I imagine that there are a lot of people, leaders listening to this that maybe are about to enter into a phase of M and A. And maybe it's their first time ever going through this process. And I'm sure they have a lot of questions and they're probably reaching out to their network and asking that one people leader that they know has seen it and done it several times. I guess, like, first question for you, do you get a lot of calls from your peers that are going through, going through some of these similar changes that are like, Nicole, I need your help. Like, I've never done this and this is a lot. And if so, like, like what's like the first question that you typically get from them?

Speaker A: Yeah, I do actually. Whether it's my network, my family, friends, you know, I mean, I think it's the way of the world at the moment, right There's a lot of companies combining and coming together. And if I think about how I approach things, the first integration I went through versus the sixth, I mean, it was night and day different. And I would say the same for my team. I think if I could share one piece of advice with people, it would be. And it's so easy to say and so hard to do is like, focus on what you can control. Because again, you know, we like to have the ability to control what we do. Right. If you're a, uh, red personality and, you know, you're really driven and you're really competitive, probably with yourself, right. You want to be able to show that you can be the best, and you want to be able to control what you're doing. And in these circumstances, a lot of the things we can control get a lot smaller. Smaller for a period of time. Right. And I think the, the human in us wants to be able to step outside that box and, you know, show our impact on a wider level. And that can be quite frustrating, particularly if you are a highly ambitious, highly talented individual that just really wants to make a difference. Right? But sometimes having the impact these things have on ourselves affect how we feel, and then therefore, it affects how we show up, up. Right? So being able to just focus on what we can control. I think the other thing is back to that sort of curiosity, right? Don't make assumptions, ask questions. Because I think people start from a different place and you see something that looks different in a different company, you make assumptions based on what you're seeing there. And a lot of times we don't see intent. We only see behaviors, and those behaviors might look different to ours. And so that there's a. A high tendency to kind of write things off by saying, oh, that feels different, or, oh, no, I wouldn't have gone about it that. Right. Or, you know, assuming things about another company's culture or assuming things about how another company works. Whereas if you take the time to discuss and share, you find out, actually you have a lot more in common than you think. You know, the. The other thing I would say is when. Particularly when it comes to sort of careers. So if you're in that position where, you know, you're going through a reorg and, you know, maybe the job that you had before isn't there today. I mean, every one of these integrations that I went through, I ended up with a bigger job job. But if I look at the job I ended up with, it may not have been the job I would have picked. And so Being flexible about both as an individual, but if you're an HR practitioner who's having to set some of these sort of policies and standards is the more you can look sort of vertical across the organization, not just straight up within a department, the better, the more flexibility that you can give people in these situations, the better. Because again, that gives them more they can control if you give them a form of flexibility. Not everybody thinks the same way, not everyone learns the same way, not everybody goes through assessments in the same way. So thinking about the individuals you're trying to solve for and giving a level of flexibility and control throughout that process will just help ease some of that change management that people have to go through as part of these big acquisitions and mergers.

Speaker D: So it's one thing to smash two companies with hundreds of employees together. Even that don't get me wrong, and I'm by no means belittling those companies. Least they, uh, there, that is very, very hard to integrate. You're right, I should use more positive language. Integrate, you know, companies with hundreds of employees. But when you talk about 27,000, you know, tens of thousands, I feel like that's just a totally different ball game and your comps, you know, become much smaller. And I. So I think the, in terms of like, who else has gone through a similar experience like this? And so, uh, it's no surprise to me that you're, you're getting calls from friends and, and your PE wanting you to advise someone else on how to do it successfully. And so we've talked a lot about the foundational pieces, like, you know, what you really need to look at if you want to give yourself a shot at, you know, achieving the mutual goals and objectives you set out for the combined entity. That is just the beginning though. You then have to work your way through. It was probably more of like an 18 to 36 month timeline. And the thing with large organizations, you know, it's kind of like, wait, it's like drag. Like the larger you are, the riskier I feel like it is that the drag if you do not achieve, you know, the level of velocity that you need to achieve in terms of change, like you may not have a fighting chance. And so with such a large organization, like, you know, when what do you look at or I guess how do you get that momentum engine going? Like, you know, let's dig into that a little bit.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, making sure that you have the right level of tracking and monitoring is so important. Important because, you know, as you said, it's a very large tanker to try to turn and change takes time and everyone's in their own space. Right. It will be the same for teams and GEOs. And because we are so geographically spread as well, I think sometimes when it comes to the cascade of those priorities or the things that matter most or goals, things can get stuck at a certain level of the organization. So making sure that you have the right pulse methods to say how far did this go? Right. Rather than just assuming, well, we sent it out in an email so you know, everyone must know about it. That's where the change management comes in. Right. So we set X. What are we seeing? What are the signals we're getting back in order to think that these things are actually happening and where are we getting signals to say that something got stuck as it. As it would. And you know, I think middle management are really key here. It's a really important acceleration layer and ensuring that your messages are making it through, through, you know, the rounds of senior leadership right to the front line is really important and also being able to take those people on the journey. So you know, some of that stuff for me is around having the right, as I said, tracking and monitoring, having the right listening groups. We have culture champions across the globe, we have site leaders across the globe and you know, their jobs are also to help us keep our finger on the pulses to say, you know, how effective is this stuff being? How's it being received? Right. Where are we pushing to hard? Where are we pushing the organization too hard? Where should we dial it back a little? Where are we ahead of track? And you know, maybe we can move some of that resources into other places. I think our CEO Cameron Brady on welcome day said, said it really well when he said, you know, we've just run a marathon and I'm really proud of the work that we've done. But now we've got to turn the corner and run that same marathon uphill. This is complicated stuff, right? And we're doing it at a scale that, I mean it's the biggest scale I've ever done. But in some, in some of that sense, I think what you have to do as a leader is be able to be very in touch with team and take it as sprints. Right. If you can break it down into sprints of like here's what we need to deliver now we're going to do that rest. Here's what we're going to need to deliver next. And what I like to do in my leadership team as well is actually just gauge the energy of the team. Because there's a lot of times where we've got to make trade offs and say, you tap out, you're done this week. You tap in. Who's got energy in the tank, right? And as long as you've always got someone who's got energy in the tank, you're good. We haven't got to the point yet where no one has energy in the tank. Um, that's going to be, you know, more of a challenge. But generally, if you have an environment where people feel there is a level of psychological safety where they can say, hey, you know, I'm running at 2, and someone else can say, I'm a 6. Let me take over. You can make that marathon a lot more achievable, but you got to have the right pulses, both on the energy, right. And the morale of the organization and the belief in what we're trying to do and the messages that you're trying to send to make it worth it, then these things are very achievable. I also think back to your point about, you know, the 36 months or however many months, it never stops because transformation is continual. And I think the more people can think about this as a marathon and not a sprint. Right. And there are sprints we do within it, but our goals are always changing, always evolving, as is the sector. Right. And particularly for HR teams. I think what's being asked of HR teams is changing all the time. Right. And so you constantly have to think about, are these the programs or initiatives that we're delivering to the business hitting their objectives and hitting the mark, or do we need to change them? And that should be something that happens all the time.

Speaker C: So you've mentioned the listening groups and the pulses that you're getting out through the company and just having your site leaders give you updates on how things are going.

Speaker B: Are these.

Speaker C: When you say tracking and monitoring, is this what you're referring to or is there anything else that you guys.

Speaker A: No, I mean, we do a ton. I mean, our transformation program has work streams that are set up across the entire business. You know, we come together as an executive team every week to review progress on that. The tracking is immense and very real. Um, and it's needed because, you know, there's a lot to do and there will be times where as an executive team we have to make priority calls about, you know, what the right thing to do is, where maybe there's too much on, on the hopper. And we do that on a weekly basis. I would say each of the Teams as well, uh, within each of the functions. So if I think about my team, you know, we have that regular cadence, we have quarterly QBRs, you know, but it isn't. We look at it holistically. We don't see it as well. This is integration and this is BAU. Because I don't think I've experienced the word BAU in my career in the last 15 years. And so it's something we talked about as a team. Right.

Speaker C: What is that? I don't even know what that is exactly.

Speaker A: Right. What is bau? Right. So we call it our people plan or our transformation plan. And ultimately it's all grounded on. On how do we continue to evolve as a function to provide a better service to all the people that work here and ultimately to our customers. Right. And that's how we approach it across all the functions. It's about continuous improvement versus integration is a part of it. But the spirit of what we're trying to do is really improve the way we work.

Speaker D: Wow. I mean there's so much that we could dig into, I guess, as we. But we're very close to needing to turn the corner to, to end the conversation. You know, uh, for those that might. Going back to the listener that Daniel mentioned, that has been thrusted into kind of this M and a change transformation landscape. You know, it seems daunting right now. There's like so much you mentioned morale, you mentioned a couple of things and it feels like it's never like it is never been more challenging to like engage or even get like a great read on where people are at with their jobs. Uh, you know, it's been non stop change post Covid. You know, I think we, we shifted from like an employee centric market to an employer centric market. Then you throw AI curveballs and you know, global uncertainty. How do you rally. What are some of your go to methods in terms of like rallying people and really building the kind of morale at the company that you need and want to support a massive effort like this, like ending on the kind of human kind of element here. Like you know, we, we're all, we all have some concerns right now. I don't know anyone that doesn't, you know, that is just thriving and loving and there's nothing that could be different or better in their job. I think we all have a little bit of that. And so knowing that like, you know, what can we do to just bring a little more calm, you know, in the midst of the chaos?

Speaker B: Something we've noticed on the podcast Is that a lot of HR teams are operating in reaction mode. A process breaks, a form is missing, payroll needs fixing, somebody's onboarding gets delayed, and before you know it, the entire week gets consumed by operational work. Jesse Zvon, author for Built for People, calls this the difference between people operating ops and human ops. People ops is the infrastructure, payroll, systems, compliance, workflows, while human ops is the leadership work that actually shapes culture and performance, Coaching, trust, team effectiveness. And the real opportunity isn't just making operations more efficient. It's giving leaders enough space to focus on the work that only humans can do. And that's where Intuit QuickBooks payroll comes in. It brings payroll time tracking, account and team management together in one connected system, helping reduce the operational drag that pulls leaders away from their teams. In this summer, it's evolving into QuickBooks workforce, expanding beyond payroll into a more connected system for the entire employee lifecycle. This will include hiring and onboarding, automating workflows for key moments like promotions and offboarding, clear visibility into labor costs, and planning, planning a single place to manage payroll, time off, benefits and performance. So instead of constantly reacting, teams can spend more time supporting their people.

Speaker C: If you want to learn more, you

Speaker B: can go to quickbooks.com workforce. That's quickbooks.com workforce.

Speaker A: I think, I think it's a really relevant question and one I ask myself a lot. I think the world itself has become more uncertain than ever. The employment market has become more uncertain than ever. And you know, with things like social media, you know, and things that people hear from other companies, whether it's AI or whatever thing it is, there's a kind of growing fear out there that I think even if those aren't things that your employees are experiencing, they're things that they're hearing about from their colleagues, you know, from their family. They're worried for their, for their children. How AI is going to affect the next generation. What are grad programs going to look like? Very much top of mind for me, by the way, with a son coming out of, uh, of college. Right. So there's a lot of speculation on, on things. And the world is a big place when it comes to connections of Internet media, but sometimes can be smaller than ever in the way that different countries are viewing these things as well. And as a global company, you know, this is something that we're very focused on, is, you know, the world in some ways never seems bigger, but also never seems smaller. And it's becoming more localized. And I think as far as sort, uh, of what we as leadership teams can do to help settle, you know, some of that uncertainty is I just keep going back to over communicating, right. The more uncertain things are, the more leaders have to lean in and in the absence of any narrative, people will find their own. And so I think sometimes leaders wait to have all the information to get the white smoke and say here's the decision we made and don't spend enough time keeping people filled in on the context, on what they're thinking about and ultimately why it matters. So when it comes to things like AI, just as an example, you know, being clear with the organization around, how do we see AI, right? Why do, what do we believe in when it comes to AI? How do we think humans and machines should work together and talking about some of that stuff up front, right? Helping people come on that journey because again, you know, if people understand what you're trying to achieve, I think the extra effort, you know, the morale, they come because you know what you're doing and you know, how you contribute to uh, a bigger goal. And I've found an experience of, of leading people teams for many years, years. I don't think I've ever worked in an environment where people didn't always have a lot to do, but wow, did we have fun doing it. And so being able to be really clear about what you're trying to achieve as a team, the part each person plays, rewarding people, recognizing people, but mostly over communicating the why and the clarity, it helps to relieve some of that uncertainty because you know, obviously having trust in the organization is important as well. But if you have that trust, being able to say come with me is so much better. And having leaders that are going to jump in and lead their teams through uncertainty than saying we're going over there and I hope you get there. Which I think sometimes there's a gap in the narrative, right? And people only come out and communicate things when they have a firm decision or when there is an action versus communicating the thought and the context that led to the decisions that you're making as an organization and why ultimately that will make the organization better.

Speaker C: Man, that, that uh, that was spot on. And I have so many follow up questions. We only have three minutes. But just to repeat, you know, over communicate in the absence of a narrative, people will find their own. And that's so true.

Speaker B: And it's usually that gap in the

Speaker C: narrative because you'll hear things early on and then you'll hear nothing. And that's that gap and that's when everybody's talking on the Side like, oh, what's going to happen?

Speaker D: We knew it, we knew it goes all the way.

Speaker A: Then it doesn't happen. You're like, oh, I wasted all that energy.

Speaker C: Yeah. So, uh, spot on. I. I'm going to avoid asking another question. The last part of every episode is rapid fire questions. We ask the same four questions to every guest, and we'll try to get

Speaker B: through them as quickly as possible.

Speaker C: So question one. What's one piece of advice that you'd give to somebody starting in HR today?

Speaker A: Ooh, good one. I was actually just talking to one of my team about this this morning. I feel like the HR landscape is changing so rapidly, rapidly. And so I think, you know, if I had to give one piece of advice, stay connected to what a business is trying to achieve and, you know, think about how you can make that better. I think the. The role of the people team. You can hear it in my title, right? People, culture, change. Like, people connect across everything. Change connects across everything. Culture connects across everything. And so the more that they can view their role as holistic versus sort of within a sandpit of a brief, the better result results that they're going to have as an HR practitioner. The other thing I would say is the more time you spend in lots of different areas, the better the results when you get more senior, because that will be experience that you can draw on and connect those dots versus kind of coming through maybe one. I think a lot of people are very focused on, like, I want to be promoted. I want to be promoted. Actually, there's a lot of breadth that can be had from. From spending time in different parts of hr. It's something I did not intentionally. It happened organically because I took the opportunities that were in front of me. But I think that's really helped me to connect dots in the wider business as I've come up through the ranks.

Speaker D: It's like every answer you're giving us now, Nicole could be a podcast on it. So, like, I'm not going to dig into that either. Next question. If your team gave you a superpower nickname, what would it be?

Speaker A: Ooh, a superpower nickname. They give me a lot of nicknames so much. I do actually have a little figure. We did as. As a team of us all as superheroes, but it didn't have a nickname on it. Wow, that's a hard one. I think you might have stumped it.

Speaker D: I thought this was so easy in my head. Like Transformer. Like the Transformer.

Speaker A: Yeah, it might be Transformer. I think my team are quite Smart and witty. I'm going to go with Transformer for now, but. But I'll come back. We can make.

Speaker D: We can do better.

Speaker A: We can do better.

Speaker B: I think.

Speaker C: I see. Is that your little figure in the back background?

Speaker A: Uh, it's on the other side. It's.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Costume.

Speaker C: Yeah. Okay, next question. If you could steal one strategy from another company, what would it be?

Speaker A: One strategy. I know that you had Isabelle on here from Wise a while ago, and I was joking with her because we used to work together, and I see a lot of the stuff that she does as a gold star standard. Um, I love her evp. I love the way that they've sort of thought about their careers at Wise. Holistic, physically. And I always use it as a. As a good sort of. I'm going to stretch myself. What's Isabelle up to? So I'm going to go with that one.

Speaker D: You're going to casually drop that. You have that connection here right when we need to drop. Oh, my God. Like, I had no idea. Last question. You know, we. And it's so, uh, one of the main reasons we've had so many great guests like yourself on the show. Who should we have on next? Like, if you can think of someone who deserves the spotlight, like, who would that be?

Speaker A: So, someone I used to work with early days worldpay, who's a mentor for me, actually has done. He's doing a lot. He's done a lot in his company, but he's starting to do a lot externally as well around AI, you know, and the story he has to tell there is pretty incredible. I, uh, think that's something a lot of companies are focusing on right now. And so it would be Andy Doyle at Qatar. Yeah, he's done a couple of podcasts. I found them really interesting.

Speaker C: Oh, we'd love to have him. Okay, and final tradition. One word or phrase? Close. What's coming to mind for you? One word or a few as we end this episode? Could be anything.

Speaker A: Inspired. It's nice to be able to, you know, step out. I think when you're deep in some of these integrations and transformations, sometimes it's nice you made the point about sort of taking. Taking the view back. It's always nice to talk about what we've done. Really proud of the team, really proud of the progress we've made and everybody at Global Payments and how we've come together. And it's been nice to kind of take a. A bit of a walk down memory lane in talking to you today. So Yeah, I found it inspiring. Thank you.

Speaker D: I'm gonna go with impressed. I have, sorry, uh, to cut you off, Daniel. I have. I did a two and a half year tour duty in this, what we've talked about today, and it's not for the fainted heart and it's incredibly difficult work and that largely goes under recognized because it's like just how the new company operates and, uh, so kudos to your team, Nicole, to you and your team. Sorry. Because it's, that's a lot.

Speaker A: It's the team that do it and you know, they get every day and they come in with all the new ideas and new ways of doing things and every time we do it, it gets better.

Speaker C: And I'm going to say energy, like this was my, it felt like this is like my coffee, you know, to begin the week. I mean, this is my first meeting of the week on a Monday and now I have energy going forward. So thank you so much, Nicole. This was so good. So we'd love to have you back again in the future and yeah, enjoy the rest of your week and thank you so much for us joining, joining us.

Speaker A: Thank you both. It's been great talking to you.

Speaker D: Bye, guys.

Speaker B: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Modern People Leader.

Speaker C: We really, really appreciate it. And if you enjoyed the show, please

Speaker B: leave us a five star rating. It would mean the world to us.

Speaker C: And connect with us on LinkedIn. We want to know what you think about the show and you can find

Speaker B: links to both of our profiles in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and see you on the next episode.