Post-Acquisition Playbook: How to Blend Landscape Company Cultures

With mergers and acquisitions, a company’s numbers may get the deal done, but how well their culture is integrated will determine whether the partnership succeeds or unravels in the months that follow. Blending company cultures is not a sprint but a marathon that starts well before the papers are signed and continues long after the acquisition closes.

“It’s not a 30-day process,” says Skip Thompson, vice president of post-merger integration for Landscape Workshop, based in Birmingham, Alabama. “It’s several months in the process. I would say it takes six months to a year to be fully integrated with everything that we’re trying to do, and that’s where the inclusion really is important. You’ve got to include them along the way. You have got to explain the why. You’ve got to be transparent and really work with these guys, and you’ve got to celebrate the wins. You’ve got to really do a good job of that.”

Review Cultural Fit Before Buying

When conducting your due diligence, it’s essential to make sure the business you wish to acquire has a similar company culture and values.

“We do not require a company to look exactly like us, and in fact, differentiation often creates value,” says Robert Jackson, chief human resources officer for Monarch Landscape Companies, based in Los Angeles, California. “However, there are foundational expectations. The business must operate with integrity, maintain a clean and disciplined operation, prioritize safety, value its people, and demonstrate genuine customer commitment. Those are table stakes. If those elements are not present, no amount of EBITDA accretion justifies the long-term integration risk.”

Frank Annino, president of maintenance for Sperber Landscape Companies, based in Westlake Village, California, says cultural alignment is the most important thing before they can move into the next conversation.

“It would be wrong to bring in somebody who values something different than what we do, because we would be bringing a stranger into the family,” Annino says.

Annino says that because they have a culture of caring for people, they look for warning indicators in potential acquisitions, such as turnover within the leadership.

“Those are all things that demonstrate that the owner cares about their people and their customers,” Annino says.

Thompson says a red flag they watch for is when a company lacks a strong leadership team. Other red flags to be mindful of include safety complacency, disorganized or neglected equipment and customer churn without ownership.

“Culture is observable within the first few hours on-site if you know what to look for,” Jackson says.

Jackson says they look for collaborative leadership behavior, strong frontline engagement and leaders who can articulate their business beyond financial metrics.

Day One Best Practices

Because acquisitions are an intimate process until after the deal is completed, how you go about communicating this change post-closing to the larger team plays a major role in retention.

“Frank usually is very adamant about being there on day one to have a conversation with everyone, just a message to everyone that, ‘Hey, we are partnering with this business because we believe in the business, and you are the business,’” says Matt Hartman, VP of corporate development for Sperber.

Hartman adds that when you aren’t transparent from the start, this can cause people to develop their own theories about what is going on.

“The first question they have is ‘Do we still have a job?’” Thompson says. “That’s one of the first things. And then ‘What are we going to do?’ We tell the guys at the crew level they’ll probably see the least change of everybody, because they’re still going to run the same crews they’ve been running. They’re going to do the same work they’ve been doing. They’re more likely to do the same skills they’ve been doing in the same equipment they’ve been doing it in. The things that they tend to see are that at some point, they’ll see a uniform change and a decal change on their trucks and trailers. Other than that, we bought a company that’s doing a great job. We don’t want to disrupt that.”  

Outlining your 30-60-90-day plan for the team will help them understand what is changing and what will stay the same. Jackson says there should be no ambiguity as integration risks increase exponentially when communication lags.

It also helps if you have an integration team that can dedicate their time and focus to bringing the new company on board.

“It’s very important for us to get off on the right foot with our integration team, establish expectations and just explain the whole process,” Thompson says. “An acquisition is extremely emotional, especially for an owner. It’s an emotional time, and uncertainty is not good. So the more we can explain the processes in our systems and things and have a plan for all that and how that they fit into it, the better we are.”

Creating Cultural Cohesion Across Locations

Knowing the non-negotiables of your culture before the integration process starts allows you to know where to focus on rolling out changes early on.

For instance, Annino says their number one priority is safety. He says it is their obligation to make sure their partner companies all understand the importance of a safe working environment. Annino says when care and concern for the employee isn’t number one, cultures crash.

At Landscape Workshop, their goals are to be a great place to work, to deliver excellent customer service across all their locations and stay consistent with one company and one culture.

“The relationship doesn’t go away that the people have with their partners and their clientele, but it’s hard to be one company with one culture if you have a bunch of different brands,” Thompson says. “The consistency of our brand enables a consistent customer experience across all our markets. You can incorporate a culture into a brand and not lose that culture and actually help grow your brand as well.”

Jackson says their cultural non-negotiables include safety above productivity, ethical conduct without exception, respect for employees, accountability for performance, financial transparency and discipline, and customer retention as a core priority. He says that by not bending on these standards, they can protect their brand integrity and enterprise value.

“Within those guardrails, autonomy is one of our core values,” Jackson says. “Branch leaders retain meaningful authority over local hiring, customer relationships, and team dynamics. Uniformity where required. Autonomy where it drives performance.”

Preserving and Scaling Cultural Aspects

While company cultures should be similar, there will be unique aspects to every business. Taking your time with the integration process will allow you to thoughtfully determine which aspects should remain or be disseminated across your other locations as well.

Jackson says they will evaluate an acquired company’s practices through the lenses of:

1. Does it improve employee engagement or retention?
2. Does it enhance customer loyalty or service differentiation?
3. Does it improve operational efficiency or safety outcomes?

“If a legacy practice drives measurable performance, we scale it,” Jackson says. “If it’s tradition without impact, we appreciate it but may not institutionalize it.”

Annino says when they identify a unique practice of a new partner company, they will encourage sharing with others in the organization.

“We have some really great leaders across the country,” Annino says. “They’ll be the ones to raise their hand and say, ‘Hey, do you mind if I steal that from you?’ or ‘Can I come spend a day or two with you?’ I would say one of the things we’re most proud of is the cross-pollination of ideas to improve best practices in developing a positive culture.”

Thompson says they are always looking for what is best for their company. In one instance, they acquired a business that had a superior GPS system, so they converted the entire company to that system.

“We’re always open to the way companies operate and function and how they do things, and it’s not something we go in and break the first day,” Thompson says. “We try to let them continue to run their business, look, evaluate, analyze and see if you guys are doing something that maybe we should be doing.”

Acquisitions aren’t about replacing one culture with another but identifying what each organization does well and building something stronger together.