Brad Jacobs

It just is identical in every way.

I shouldn't say in every way because every branch, every location, every district, every region does have its own flavor.

It has its own personality because you have cultural differences in different parts of the country or in different countries.

But the general blood and guts of the business is the same.

And for me, that's the goal.

The goal is to get to the point where you have fully integrated this business on every level into the rest of the company and it's part of the family.

Listening and demonstrating sincere respectfulness.

So this is probably my most important learning in integration is not to come into an acquisition thinking I know it all and getting up there on stage and telling everyone, okay, and giving them a long speech of here's what we're going to do.

No, what I want to do is I want to come in with a very open, receptive mind to say, look, we've just paid millions and millions, in some cases, billions of dollars for this business.

Obviously, we think it's valuable.

And these are the people who are going to make this company work.

And I look at those people as an extremely valuable source of information about the company that we just spent all that money to buy.

And I often find, and I write about this in the book, that I often find that employees at all levels, whether they're frontline, middle management, senior management, have never been asked, what's your best idea to improve the company?

Tell me everything that you would do if you had my job.

And when you ask them that, and then shut up and just listen carefully to what they're saying, write it down.

It's an amazing experience.

Sometimes you ask those questions and then

For 45 minutes, all the people you're interviewing just are piling on and interrupting each other because it's just such an exciting experience to say how they could improve the business.

It's unleashing these perspectives, this knowledge, this information about the business that you don't get otherwise.

I find a lot of companies, many companies, in fact, the majority of companies, they have this...