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Assessing Teams like a Venture Capitalist a conversation with Hutton Henry of Beyond M&A
43 Plays6 months ago
Hutton Henry is the man who can increase the sale value of your technology, digital or creative business.
He provides venture capitalists and angel investors with assessments of the invest-ability of your business.
The value of your tech business is based on the value your tech team delivers.
In this conversation with Michael Millward, Hutton explains how he conducts his assessments and how even if you are not looking to sell your business the same assessments can help to make your tech team more productive and easier to communicate with.
The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr.
Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform, on which you can create your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, and Google You Tube Music. It really does make creating content so easy.
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing and use our offer code ABECEDER.
Travel to County Durham
As well as being a tech expert and really decent bloke, Hutton Henry is also a village in County Durham in the north east of England.
If you would like to visit Hutton Henry (the village), a good place to plan your travel is The Ultimate Travel Club. It is where you will get trade prices on travel including flights, and hotels.
Visit the Ultimate Travel Club, and use our offer code to receive a discount on your membership fee.
• ABEC79
You can find out more about both Michael Millward, and Hutton Henry at abeceder.co.uk.
Three – the network
If you are listening to The Independent Minds on your smart phone in the UK, you may like to know that Three has the UK’s Fastest 5G Network with Unlimited Data, so listening on Three means you can wave goodbye to buffering.
Visit Three for more information about business and personal telecom solutions from Three. And the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
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Being a Guest
I met Hutton Henry on Matchmaker.fm.
If you are a podcaster looking for interesting guests or if like Hutton, you have something very interesting to say Matchmaker.fm is where matches of great hosts and great guests are made. Use our offer code for a discount on membership.
- MILW10
We recommend that potential guests take one of the podcasting guest training programmes available from Work Place Learning Centre.
If you have liked this episode of The Independent Minds, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen any time anywhere.
To make sure you do not miss future editions please subscribe.
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abeceder is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think!
Thank you to you for listening.
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencaster.
Introduction to The Independent Minds
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abisida and people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
Zencastr and Special Offer
00:00:21
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, the managing director of Abisida. As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, the independent minds is made on Zencaster. Zencaster is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then dispute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Google, and iTunes. It really does make making content so easy.
00:00:50
Speaker
If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code ABACEDA. All the details are in the description. Now that I've told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
Guest Introduction: Hutton Henry
00:01:14
Speaker
Very importantly, in this episode of The Independent Minds, as in every upper episode, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. Today, my guest independent mind is Hutton Henry, who is the managing partner at Beyond M&A. Hello, Hutton. Hi, Michael. How are you doing? I'm extremely well. Thank you very much. And I hope that you can say the
A Village Named Hutton?
00:01:37
Speaker
same. I'm really well. I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
00:01:41
Speaker
It's great that you've got the time to be able to contribute to the independent minds. I do appreciate it. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. Now, usually at this point, I tell you where my guest is based, but not today. That is because Hutton Henry is not only my guest today, Hutton Henry is also a place.
00:02:06
Speaker
Hutton Henry is a village in County Durham near Peter Lee, Castle Eden and Wingate, which means it's right in the heart of Catherine Cookson country. I bet you didn't know that, did you, Hutton? I've had my photos taken in the village, actually, my brother. Oh, yeah. I'm really disappointed. i thought i'd I thought I'd found something new and unusual and you're the first person that I've met got a village named after you in County Durham. Oh, thank you. it It actually makes it very, very difficult to find me on Google. If you type in my name, everything about the village and the school and the right move entries all appear. Yeah, that's true. It does. I've done my search and saw several pages on before you came up because it's all about a really nice looking village in County Durham. Yes. And actually, I'm thinking like when you go in and just like you're in the restaurant or one of the shops or something and you could pay with cash, but you really want to pay with the credit card. So they see your name on the credit card. yeah or if If only I could go in with the check as well. Right. So I could write my name and so sign it.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yes, searching for a visitor's book somewhere that you can sign. yeah Well, Hutton, if you take my advice that next time you visit, I recommend that you book all your travel arrangements for your trip at your namesake village with the Ultimate Travel Club, because the Ultimate Travel Club is where you can access trade prices on flights and hotels, etc. There is a link and a membership discount code in the description.
Beyond M&A's People-First Approach
00:03:38
Speaker
Now, Aten, please can we start by you telling us a bit more about yourself, please. Of course, thank you. So really thrilled to be here. I yeah see i run this business with the odd name Beyond M and&A. Sounds very serious and commercial. And it is serious because we basically explained that we were a tech business run by psychologists, which is a huge claim. I'm a techie that got into psychology due to some tech problems over 25 years ago.
00:04:07
Speaker
and my partner Simon is a psychologist that got into tech. In reality our our primary business value is people first and I don't i don't want you to see that as some sort of soppy sentiment because we we believe you know that to be people first is around honesty and talking to our teams and really understanding what we what they think and and in reality what our big thing is is our focus on the tech teams and and really helping understand them and increase self-awareness so that we can build better tech for businesses. um And that sort of come from the last few years, we've been working for investors. I assess about five to seven companies a month on behalf of investors, ah providing tech due diligence. And the major thing we do is look at the team because they're the people who make the tech, right?
00:04:58
Speaker
Yes. That's a little bit around us really. So it sounds a little bit like something I did years ago when I worked for a technology company that went on a bit of the buying spree. Okay. And as an HR person, my job was to fly around Europe going into all of their different offices and meet with all the managers and and make an assessment of the individual managers and the teams that they were running and deciding where people in the right job to move forward with the organization. Did we need to train them? What What was going to be that, that individuals and teams future yeah within the new bigger organization. And I agree with you very often when you've got a merger or an acquisition, it's more likely to be an acquisition than a merger, but it's the people that are being purchased as much as the technology or the customer base. It's the people that made all of that possible, which makes yeah the organization attractive to invest in.
00:05:56
Speaker
Absolutely. So say my I think with that primary value of people first, it it came from years of working in M and&A on the tech side. And we basically, you all understand this Michael, we all look at the P and&L and the spreadsheets and a minimal sort of View of the people specially because that view is quite limited pre before the deal so to me the way to help transform and keep the knowledge inside the companies was to actually analyze the people which was became a mission over the last decade.
00:06:29
Speaker
It's the value of the business that somebody is considering investing in is the people who have created the technology, not necessarily the technology itself. It's something that you see on programs like Dragon's Den. The investors are interested in the entrepreneur and that saying people buy people yeah is never truer than when someone is thinking about investing into a business or investing in the people. So what are the big issues that you face, you see when you're looking at a tech team within an organization that you are assessing? What would be the top sort of three issues that come to mind most often?
00:07:10
Speaker
I mean, I guess you you would have seen this for sure in that that role you had. And you've got that initial shock. A lot of them don't know that this is ah that has just happened. So that you you need that piece to get them through. But the the three areas that I generally am interested in is is number one, their communication and the way that they analyze things to is is how they look at values and value to the business. And and then the like the last one was this sort of quick way of helping to understand the team true and I can share that as well.
00:07:49
Speaker
as an HR professional and talking about communication teams and somebody who's involved in HR technology. yes yeah The first thing that's important there is is communications and anybody who doesn't work in tech, who's tried to have a conversation, a meeting with people who do work in tech. will tell you that it can be quite tricky, you know, working out how to communicate with technology people. Have you got any secrets that you can let us in, in on for how this should communicate with technology people? So I used to have this slide.
00:08:23
Speaker
Yeah, i used i be how it's like I used to have this slide I used to present years ago with two skydivers, right? And the first skydiver was way down. um And that was the business and the other skydiver was the was the tech team. And they could never catch up with what the business needs were. And i' really, yea d ah the number one thing I'd say is around self-awareness within that team. I would say that because of my bias towards trying to promote that tech team and to help them communicate. What I do find is that a lot of people came into tech because they were interested or as a hobby. And um I definitely tested this, right? that as a young person in tech, we are so valuable because of our tech skills, there is not the normal investment in our people skills. And I checked it, you know, having gone on these courses as well as an older person, ah a young self person at 1920 would get very different training to a tech person.
00:09:24
Speaker
And the salesperson will get an awareness of how to talk to people, what to do, because that's their core job, where the tech person's job is really about building something that's quite cerebral in nature and quite logical. So to cut to the chase, my number one thing is, you know, have a look at this company, look at what they're building, but let's try and get under the skin of of the team as itself. And I have this sort of mantra of of architect the team before the technology. Let's take that type of assessment. So it doesn't matter what assessment you do, but let's get people in the room talking. Let's talk about people, not tech um is
Tech Team Self-Awareness and Improvement
00:10:07
Speaker
is my first piece. So increasing self-awareness really.
00:10:11
Speaker
Yes. And it's interesting that the question was about communication, but your answer is about self-awareness. And I suppose the key to being able to communicate with other people is to first understand how you communicate with yourself. and what your own strengths and weaknesses are within the communication scenario. And then you can emphasize your strengths and compensate for your weaknesses in order to make sure that you get the internal customer, the non-technical person,
00:10:44
Speaker
on your side so that they understand what it is that you're going to be doing. But also, because somebody else understands what you're doing as the technical person, you increase your chances of being able to understand what that other person, the non-technical person, wants the technology to do. Yes, yeah. So there's a... So but we've spoken around this, so the main skill that they may learn as a young person is critical analysis. This does or doesn't work. yeah It's a very logical way of thinking, which in the past used to work perfectly because software was was quite hard to build.
00:11:22
Speaker
and And so we had to be quite ah critical about tech to make sure we protected our businesses. But this has continued and the world has changed because what they really need to be understanding people in the tech teams all the way from the leader down to the engineers is ah a way of being more collaborative. And I coined that as as sort of of something my thing, but collaborative analysis is the ideal situation. So they're still being logical. They're still fulfilling their needs to understand it at a very deep technical area, but they're also understanding the other person's need, as you're saying. Yes. Yeah. And I suppose in some ways when you've got a more collaborative analysis of the issues, the challenges, you're going to end up with a more intuitive solution.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yes. and And I try and pitch to the the yeah the team. So I might work on a one-to-one or an entire team basis. It depends. Either way, my pitch to all of them is it will make your job more interesting because you like to learn and you like to fix problems. Why not ah understand it from wearing the other person's shoes? And then you'll see your problem in a more three-dimensional way. Yes. And that sort of takes us into the second issue that you mentioned, which is the values. And I suppose understanding the values of the tech team, as well as the value that they provide. And I get the feeling that some of what you've just been describing would indicate that
00:12:55
Speaker
Tech teams that could be better will understand the value that they deliver into the commercial proposition of the organization. But those that perform better will be those that understand the values of the organization and the values of the team and how those come together to deliver even more value for the organization. Yeah, you can't see me nodding. um that but But you can see how. Yes, I can see I'm starting to see you're making me think, which is like the whole name of the independent minds. But what I'm listening to you and thinking like, OK, I can see how an organization would have a really good technical team, but it can be so good that it operates in isolation from the rest of the organization or creates that impression.
00:13:45
Speaker
But when value and values are understood, both within a team and across the organization, that's when real combined collaborative value is added and makes the organization that you're looking at more interesting to the investors that you're representing. Absolutely. So so these things combined, right? So they compound. So if we can start to increase self-awareness, improve communication, and then look at values and value. And I'll tell you where the values piece came from. There was a way before COVID, I'd be assessing these companies on behalf of investors. And you sit next to, you it didn't have to be a leader, it could be anyone. And and a lovely brand new screensaver would come up with the company values. And I'd say, oh, what are your company values? and And you'd get most of the tech team
00:14:38
Speaker
wouldn't know them. and They say, oh, you know that yeah, we got this expensive consultant in. I love them. I love the sound of them. But can you remember them off the top of your head? No. How does the work that you do today contribute to those three or four bullet points you can see on the wall? I don't know. You know, very robotic answers. And what we really want is to try and lift that up again. Because whilst that sounds quite soft, you know, if you're hitting, you are meeting the company values, you're probably really serving the customer well. And at the end of the day, that's what we're all here for, right? yes And so that's where the values piece, if if we can analyze our teams, again, it doesn't take much, you know, and I used to, I used to get a lot of pushback at the beginning when I used to do this, so you know, these, these tech leaders will never do this with, you you know, CTI, CIOs, they would completely open up.
00:15:34
Speaker
and they would give their view of the world and I would find out what was going on, what yeah where the real struggles were in the organization, as you would see as ah as a HR professional. But what I'm really trying to do is then take all of these very soft things and convert them into a commercial output because the other person that I work for are these investors that do need to see a monetary outcome to these very objective type of assessment. yes um and and that yeah and that's why Just to add one little bit more, I can recall as we talk, and I was talking to this CTO a couple of weeks ago, a year after his assessment,
00:16:16
Speaker
And he's in County Durham, so he's around quite close to that Hutton Henry village. When I walked in and ta chatted to him, he could recall all of the company values. He knew all of his KPIs and he wasn't scared. That's just how he operated as a person. So he had the EQ and IQ things completely balanced, which meant the rest of the team were like that as well. Yes. It's like knowing them, understanding them, gives you confidence to almost think outside the box and take risks. Really very interesting. You mentioned as well that your assessments are not random. You have ah have a tool yeah which you use to structure your assessments. So i'm I'm going to
00:16:57
Speaker
I want to dig in. I want to know more about that. What is it? How does it work? Tell
Cognitive Insights with Colby Assessment
00:17:02
Speaker
me more, please. Sure. So I use and an off-the-shelf HR or like a psychometric called Colby. It's from Arizona. And that is very good for tech teams because it's very much to the point, talks about your strengths. It talks about your cognitive strengths, which is the sister word to cognitive. And it's your drive that was there from the age of six and it never changes. And it's the simple term for that is what you will do under stress. And what I found after working with over 500 people is in tech teams, regardless of the surface level diversity. So we're talking ethnicity, gender, all those age, whatever.
00:17:43
Speaker
um Underneath, these people are exactly the same connotively. 90.3% of the people I've assessed have the same profile. And yet companies want to innovate. And so we need different types of mixes of people. So I look for diversity of thought and diversity of action. and i do So that's one tool. And then there's another tool that we use for coaching leaders, which we built ourselves, which takes in all of these tech items your documentation, your values, the quick exercise that I'm going to give to you in a minute. ah yeah These quick ways of working out how good your teams are and the areas that you can, I mean, they're all good, but how can we make them more productive? So it's quite, I was going to say complex, but I don't think what you've described is complex. I think what you've described is quite thorough without potentially being complex. You're you're investigating the individuals within the team. yeah You talk about the drivers of the individual, yeah the diversity of the thought and the diversity of the action. Yes.
00:18:51
Speaker
And then you have an assessment of how that all comes together to create the organization, which for me as an HR professional is, you know, how is the organization structured? Do people know what the rules are? Do they know the consequences of following the rules, the consequences of breaking the rules? you what how their work impacts on someone else, and being able to rely upon the people who are behind them doing the right thing, not because it's a hit and miss type of activity, but because they followed
00:19:27
Speaker
the rules of for particular job. This is what my job entails. This is the output that I have to produce. This is the the way in which that output needs to look, et cetera, et cetera. You can come up with all different ways of describing it. But in an organization, you need to know that the person before you in the process has done the job to ah in a particular way so that then you can start and do your job in the right way. You haven't got to go back and correct things or send things back. yeah so So I would say, ah so the offering that we give is, because years ago, Michael, I would have just gone out to to market with, I really want to look at your tech team. And, um yeah, I want to help you design it and everything. And, you know, you're good, you're talking a good 10 years ago, I get a lot of pushback, the world has changed. But what I have done, I think to even simplify even more, is I've combined a
00:20:20
Speaker
a brain function so the the you know the cognitive capabilities with we have a lot of normal logic so it's more acceptable to teams so you can see something logical which then allows you to make let us look at your psychological aspects as well. That came from a lot of rejection.
00:20:42
Speaker
oh we all have the address Every rejection is a learning opportunity. So you're working in a way which tends to make tech teams feel quite comfortable. Yes. and if we So if I ran a tech assessment so a team assessment across a team of people, say 10 or whatever, the person that I will look for immediately who have a sort of fun thing in our team saying I'm looking for the person with a PhD in unhappiness. So it's the person who is there who doesn't really want to be there.
00:21:14
Speaker
their arms across their body language is quite low, you know, they they are really annoyed that I'm there. And they're the one person that I will focus it every on. No, not not to pick on them, but to really sort of, you know, if I can win that person over, I pretty much won the whole room over if you know what I mean. So I do. I have been running training courses myself where I've had one or two of those people in the room and you do your best and eventually you swing them around so that they get more involved and and involved in a positive way and that sort of stuff. But yeah from what I'm what i'm hearing, what you're saying is that if we're going to talk to our tech teams, want our tech teams to add real value,
00:21:57
Speaker
to the organization. We have to give those tech teams the skills to communicate with themselves, with each other and with the wider organization. And also that communication is a two-way street, so they're able to understand yes how the business operates. and how people would describe things in ways which are not the logical way that they want them to describe them, so they have to have interpretation and feedback skills as well, as which is all the soft skills that everybody says. People don't leave school, college and university with these sorts of skills and it falls on employers to make sure that people will get them. yeah
00:22:34
Speaker
But the other thing is about the values yeah and making sure that people understand their individual value, their collective value, but i can also fit that into the or match it with the values of the organization. And when they can do that, then they're going to add real, real value to the value of the business that they operate, that they work in. Yes. And then just one little bit more, because there has to be that logical place that people will accept the work is I can see it, my team can see that value in the roadmap. So if you're doing a tech transformation, we all spend way too much money on that, too much time, right? And if if we can see a strategy, a roadmap with with a r ROI, a simple thing, yeah we know all of these other building blocks have been probably put together quite well. Yes. You see, as someone who's been involved in numerous technology projects,
00:23:30
Speaker
the I know that at some point somebody from the technical side is going to say, well, you know, technology projects always overrun. They always go over budget. What we've been talking about for the last half an hour is a way to help the tech team and the non-tech team, not ensure, but have more of a chance of making sure that the tech project comes in on time and either on or under
Investor-Style Governance and Conclusion
00:23:57
Speaker
budget. Yes, and and to be fair to the investors, I learnt it from them. So I've been doing all of my interest in teams. What the investors, as I'm sure youre you'll be well aware, is they add a certain level of governance. So I'm trying to bring what what has been an investor grade assessment.
00:24:16
Speaker
out to others to say look at this, this is a different way of running your team and it's a really great way of doing it because it's not confrontational and you're going to get good results. Yes, and good results is what we all want. yeah And I have to be honest, Hutton, today, in our conversation, I think we've got a good result. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure pat to be here. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the managing director of Abecedah, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Hutton Henry, who is the managing partner at Beyond M and&A.
00:24:55
Speaker
You can find out more information about both of us at abocida.co.uk. There is a link in the description. If you have liked this episode of The Independent Minds, please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. Remember the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abecedah is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think. All that remains for me to say is until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.