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Leadership Levers
This podcast spotlights leaders' actions so they may enhance their organization’s performance and culture.
We feature CEOs and industry-recognized Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who share their experiences and insights on three key challenges: people, performance, and profit.
If you are a leader who wants to learn from your peers about improving performance and financial returns, please join us.
Leadership Levers
Leadership and Organizational Prosperity with Paul Fioravanti
Curious why some businesses thrive and prosper - others do not?
We sit down with Paul Fioravanti, CEO of QORVAL Partners, for a dialogue on workplace culture. Paul, with his wealth of portfolio management experience, unravels how the subtle nuances of leadership can significantly impact the well-being of employees and, by extension, the financial health of an organization.
We review strategies leaders can employ to spark a cultural change, from the power of town hall meetings to the simple act of respect. Leadership isn't about direction; it's about connection. This episode gives ideas how to cultivate a work environment that's not only positive, but incredibly productive.
We touch on the complex terrain of distressed acquisitions, an area where Paul's expertise shines. The conversation pivots to the considerations and risks that come with high-stakes investment decisions, a particularly poignant topic for strategic and financial buyers amidst a landscape of ambitious forecasts.
This episode isn't just a discussion; it is indispensable advice for leaders and Venture Captial / Angel investors alike.
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Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, will Gladhart, CMO at The Culture Think Tank. Our Culture Think Tank community is committed to advancing workplace culture and well-being. We're a virtual hub for authors, investors, leaders, managers and employees worldwide to connect, engage in candid discussions, share ideas and explore resources for cultivating a healthy work environment. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address cultural change. Our guest today is , CEO and managing partner of QORVAL Partners. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us today. I thought we would start by having you share a little bit with our audience, a bit about yourself and your organization, or your background.
Paul Fioravanti:Well, thank you for having me, william. My name is Paul Fioravanti and I'm the CEO and managing partner of Partners. We're a 27-year-old advisory firm headquartered in Naples, Florida, and we were started in 1996 by my late partner, mentor, Jim Malone. Jim was a six-time Fortune 500-100 CEO and for 27 years we've been helping businesses with a variety of challenges.
William Gladhart:Thank you so much for sharing that. So we'll be discussing three questions today and I'm curious about your responses because, since you have such a wide background in working with CEOs and a variety of companies, as a warm-up to start our conversation, would you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?
Paul Fioravanti:Well, again, just to reference Jim for a second, one of my favorite quotes that I learned from him was about culture, and it goes like this "Culture is determined by the worst behavior that the organization tolerates, and when companies are going through struggles, it's normally in three areas. It's typically financial, operational or it's some issues related to sales marketing. In some cases, they don't have a sales team or they don't have their marketing kind of dialed in. But fundamentally culture is really what determines results and often that is a shadow of the leadership or shadow of the ownership.
William Gladhart:So what do you see as the biggest challenge leaders face when addressing cultural change within an organization, or are there any challenges that you've specifically faced in your own organization?
Paul Fioravanti:Well, we work with a lot of other companies, so our business is really helping other businesses and personally I've been involved in almost 90 engagements and probably almost 40 industries. So you get the opportunity to kind of see a wide swath of organizational challenges, and this is a range of smaller companies up to publicly held companies, in some cases international businesses. I think. To sum it up, culture is really an independent variable. It's an input and any kind of input in an organizational system determines an outcome or results and if the company has a poor culture, for whatever reason, it really affects the employees and the company and the stakeholders in many different ways.
Paul Fioravanti:Sometimes it's just as simple as poor morale. I've come into organizations after particularly tyrannical leadership where the employees have essentially, you know they're suffering with PTSD and they're really struggling through. You know what are their roles, what is the direction, and in some cases I've left organizations much better than I found them and then they bring in somebody that doesn't have the background to run the organization and they wind up back where they were before and that's really again a shadow of the leader problem. And I think the opportunity for organizational leadership to leverage culture is to treat people with respect, to lead by example, to be the hardest working person in the room and again, it's sort of the golden rule, you know, to treat people the way that you want to be treated.
William Gladhart:I really appreciate you sharing that. I think we have seen some instances of just like you have, of working with organizations where the prior leadership really valued culture, the values of the organization, the staff I knew everybody by name, even though the company was fairly sizable, and new leadership stepped in and it literally just people started running for the exits because it changed so dramatically. And then that leadership replaced by another set of leadership that didn't quite understand the company and then finally, two leaders later they found the right fit. I think you bring up that again the behavior of the leader impacts every piece of the organization and you know every, from top line to bottom line, all the way through. So what do you think that leaders can do to address these particular challenges that they are facing, either around culture or, you know whatever they're struggling with?
Paul Fioravanti:Well, one of the things that we recommend and this is going to sound sort of basic, but gather with your people, right, have town hall meetings. In many of the companies that I've worked on, I would bring in lunch either once a week or, in some cases, every day, and gather with the employees and talk through some of the issues. Like you really have to connect on that level. And you know, one of the challenges equity-owned private businesses fund-owned hedge businesses is sometimes there's a lack of maturity by the operating partners and they sometimes come at the organizational challenges from a position of egoism. Right, they speak down to people. They think that you can kind of brow be and you can just, you know, cut and shrink to greatness and profit and profit. That never works. You have to connect with people, you have to treat them well, you have to ferret out the most critical information. I can think of countless examples where the real nugget of truth that the operational strategy relied on to fix the business came long-term those employees on the front lines, whether they're in, you know, manufacturing or some other area of the business. They know what the right course of action is. In some cases they just clam up because the culture is such that they're sort of browbeat right, they're not treated well and their opinions are not respected.
Paul Fioravanti:So one of the common ground things we do is every month we would recommend reading. We, you know, have Initially. We give them certain books that we want them to read, like some of the go to's are good to great by Jim Collins, lean for dummies. If it's a manufacturing environment, it's amazing like people could spend 30 years in manufacturing. They have no concept of lean or what that methodology is.
Paul Fioravanti:Most of it came out of Toyota because no one's ever led them and taught them. But there are a variety of books that we would recommend and then at some point, it would switch gears and the employees would start to bring forth books, like in some cases it would be hey, you know, I read this book 20 years ago and I had a great boss and read between the lines is they don't think that the boss they had before he came in to transform the organization was any good. So, and no one's ever asked them to share their perspectives. But again, even just having sort of a de facto book club to talk about things they've learned, you know one of the things that comes out of the Collins book is the right people in the right seats on the right bus right. So, again, its management is not as complicated as you know one would believe, and I think, again, you have to understand your stakeholders and get the nuggets of truth About the business that you're running.
William Gladhart:I really appreciate you sharing that. But I also appreciate you commenting and sharing about some of those experience. About the VC you know, equity back type businesses that you know it can be a real struggle if the Individuals that are funding that entity organization do not have the maturity and also the ability to lead culturally, because I love that you pointed out that you can only cut so much, or you can only, you know, cut back so much. Is there any? Because we do have some in our audience that are not only CEOs but Angels, VCs etc. You know you share kind of around that idea. Is there anything else that you people in that particular space might be able to do to further help the organizations that they work with in their portfolios?
Paul Fioravanti:I think you know again, one of the obvious things is study the competition and find out what works. And often times, management, governance, leadership, ownership, they're reticent to let go of things that don't work. And I think you can learn from successful people and you know the flat, fast, nimble, customer centric organization is where it's at right. You just building hierarchies, having to, you know, unwieldy of a span of control, too many layers of people. People have to be clear on what they're doing and I always try to cultivate a culture of it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Because if, in particular, for CEO is is hamstrung himself or her herself by having to raise his or her hand every time they have to go to the bathroom and get board permission, that organization is never going to go anywhere.
William Gladhart:No, I think those are some really great insights and thoughts that can start to help leaders better understand not only how to lead, but how to lead other organizations that they may be working with. So is there anything else you'd like to add today, Paul, before we wrap up?
Paul Fioravanti:No, I just think that. Well, maybe one point I think 24 is going to be an interesting year. I think there are going to be some challenges. You know, obviously, post covid, a lot of the liquidity in the market has dried up and I think that you're going to see a lot more distress in the first and second quarters, which also provides opportunity. I think there are going to be a lot of distressed opportunities for acquiring entities either in the same industry as strategic or financial buyers, funds, pe groups, etc. I think they are experiencing some challenges as well. Some of the recent acquisitions in the last five years were bought at very high multiples and very high levels of assumptions and some of those chickens are coming home to roost, as the saying saying goes.
William Gladhart:Well, I think that's some sage advice. So, Paul, I've enjoyed having you on today. Thank you so much for your thoughts and your insights.
Paul Fioravanti:Really appreciate it. William, and best to you for the holidays and hope you get some time to relax and enjoy your family and friends, thank you for joining us on the Leadership Lovers podcast.
William Gladhart:You may find all our Leadership Levers episodes in our Culture Think Tank community at www. CultureThinkTank. ai. Join the community at no charge and tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experience in strengthening culture, one action at a time.
