#362 Why Most Mergers Fail: Culture, Technology, and Leadership Lessons

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (0:00)
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation. Before we dive in, I wanted to personally thank you for listening. Many of the ideas we discuss on this show inspired my new book, AI Augmented Teams. If you're looking for practical ways to combine human expertise and AI to achieve better outcomes, I think you'll find it valuable. Learn more at paidar.ai.a.i. That is paidar.ai.a.i.
Now, let's get started with the show.

**Tom Amburgey** (0:30)
Hey, rip that band out off and try something new here from a tech perspective. If they know why, if they know why what we're doing, and they know the heart behind why we're doing it and what we're trying to accomplish, not that it's not painful and hard, but at least you're going into it with an understanding that there is thoughts behind it and that you can put something behind it and try harder.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (0:53)
Welcome to Embracing Digital Transformation where we explore how people process policy and technology drive effective change. This is Dr. Darren, Chief Enterprise Architect, educator, author, and most importantly, your host. On this episode, Why Most Mergers Fail, Culture, Technology, and Leadership Lessons with Tom Amburgey, CEO at Euna Solutions.
All right, Tom, welcome to the show.

**Tom Amburgey** (1:26)
I appreciate it, Darren. Good to be here.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (1:30)
Hey, I'm really interested in this topic because it really goes into organizational change and culture and technical debt, all those great things that we totally find when we're in M&A and integration of companies. But before we dive into that, everyone that listens to my show knows that I only have superheroes on the show, and every superhero has a background story. So Tom, you're a superhero because you have to be on my show.
What's your background story?

**Tom Amburgey** (2:01)
I appreciate that, man. The background story is always a fun story.
I come from a military family, so I was a military brat, so grew up all over the US. Didn't get to do any of the fun stuff going international. We would always come back home to Florida when my dad would get deployed overseas. But I've lived coast to coast and grew up in lots of different-

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (2:24)
Was he Air Force or what?

**Tom Amburgey** (2:26)
He was a Marine, United States Marine. Oh, Marine.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (2:30)
Okay.

**Tom Amburgey** (2:31)
Yeah.
He went in a couple of months after I was born. So I was a lifer along with him all through 18 years of growing up. And he was a career guy. He stayed in for 25 years, I think, 25, 26 years. So definitely a good upbringing.

**Dr. Darren Pulsipher** (2:48)
Tell him thank you.
Yeah. Tell him thank you for his service. We really appreciate it here on the show.

**Tom Amburgey** (2:56)
I'll do that. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah. So grew up military family, grew up kind of all over, learned a lot of different things. Probably maybe one of the most important things to learn was kind of the mission first drive about life and work and putting more important things above yourself.
My dad's case, it was the military and put the nation first. In my case, I had a high school football injury, so I couldn't go into the military, but I've always kind of had that drive of being mission first and mission minded. And so that's taken me to work primarily in government technology.
On both sides of the fence, I've worked in government, serving some municipalities in Florida and being on some other things. And then have book ended that with a couple of different GovTech companies where we're really focused on providing really good quality tools. And so, but for me, a lot of people ask me the why. And for me, it's really about making change. I joke with people like it doesn't seem in the cards for me to be Bill Gates and be able to build my own city. So I think how can I impact the most people? And I've really found that through government technology companies, we can really impact a lot of people. I've worked at places where my tools are used by agencies and things that touch upwards of 200 million people a day. And so what great a way to kind of impact the life of every American, right, is to serve government. And so we really, we work really hard to take care of people and try to do that in my life and with my family, with our community, the church, and with everything we kind of do at work. So I guess if the background story for me is kind of the humble roots of starting with the military life, all the way up through kind of staying mission-minded, through raising a family, through work that I do, through investing in communities. And I'm really happy about that. So on a personal note, I'm married 32 years, two adult children, both married now. We've got one grandchild. That's awesome. As we're recording this for birthdays on Saturday.