In this episode of YS Up Governance and Boards Podcast, 3YS Owls Governance Consultants, Ainslie Cunningham and Deb Anderson interview Kylie Sprott. Kylie is an international leader with over 25 years of demonstrated experience and achievement across a variety of industries including IT, engineering, environmental services and legal services. Kylie focuses on innovation and how this applies to people, culture, technology and business growth. Her creativity combined with her extensive M&A skills and global experience make her a unique business contributor. We explore with Kylie her extensive experience in mergers and acquisitions, integration of businesses and synergies, organisational transformation, change management, the importance of good culture, technology and Kylie's extensive contribution in the not for profit sector.

"I think it needs to be part of the due diligence process. It's good to look at the numbers. It's really good to focus on those. It's really good to look at the client piece and obviously, to see where the overlap is and where the synergies are. I think all of that's really great also for the synergies from a cost perspective, really helpful, but the culture piece often isn't covered in the due diligence phase. So that's really about going in there and really assessing in a really practical way methodically what your culture is versus the company, the target's culture. And when I've done it myself, what we've done is use the McKinsey 7S model to say, "Okay, what are the seven aspects and how do we map those out?"

And generally, it's really helpful to know where the gaps are, because if you can see the gaps, you can assess whether or not they're too big to overcome, or if they're small, then you put in place a strategy as to how you're going to address those but it means you're very transparent about that upfront at the beginning. I think when M&A tends to fall into a bit of strife is when there are suddenly surprises in the integration phase for both sides of the organisation. So, things that haven't been disclosed either in the due diligence phase, or weren't even asked in the due diligence phase, but also expectations. So, if you do the culture piece, then you're constantly going into that people element rather than just focusing on the numbers, so I think it's really important."
- Kylie Sprott

Summary of episode
· Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)
· Due Diligence (DD)
· Non-Executive Director for Position Partners and The Oranges Toolkit
· Not for Profits: The Smith Family; Rainbow House Iligan; Willow International
· Queensland Futures Institute
· Managing transformation through COVID-19 as a Chief Transformation Officer for QANTM IP (ASX:QIP)
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