How to Score Culture Fit in M&A with Sharon Van Zeeland

Sharon Van Zeeland, Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development at Rockwell Automation

Sharon brings a unique engineer's perspective to the softest parts of M&A. In this episode, Sharon reveals how Rockwell developed a systematic scoring system for evaluating culture fit during due diligence—complete with numerical rankings across key dimensions like decision-making authority, adaptability, and mission alignment. She also shares unconventional tactics for getting deals across the finish line, from negotiating hunting rights to sponsoring 4th of July parades, and explains why marrying your diligence and integration teams early is the secret to accelerating post-deal value creation.

Things You'll Learn

• How to build a numerical scoring system for culture assessment
• Why marrying your diligence and integration leaders from day one eliminates knowledge chasms, captures integration costs in your deal model, and helps you reach steady state faster than traditional handoffs
• Creative negotiation tactics beyond price and terms 

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Episode Chapters

[00:02:30] From Engineering to Corp Dev – How Sharon's electrical engineering background shaped her analytical approach to evaluating all deal variables, including the unexpected correlation between employee retention and new product introductions.

[00:05:30] Owning the Full Lifecycle – Why Rockwell expanded Sharon's role to include strategy, M&A, integration, and venture investing, creating an enterprise-wide view with quarterly reviews and closed-loop learning.

[00:08:30] The Cultural Wake-Up Call – The story of how Rockwell acquired a small software company and nearly derailed a customer's drug development timeline because they missed evaluating decision-making authority during diligence.

[00:12:00] Building a Culture Scoring System – How Rockwell uses a 50-item survey to create numerical rankings (0-5 scale) across cultural dimensions, then visualizes gaps and similarities in graphs that are "worth a thousand words."

[00:19:00] Integration Playbooks by Company Size – Why Rockwell developed separate playbooks for small, mid-size, and large acquisitions, and how they determine whether to leave companies alone, partially integrate, or fully absorb.

[00:27:00] Getting Deals Actionable – Sharon's unconventional negotiation stories: securing hunting land rights for a Texas seller, letting an owner keep his beloved company truck, and guaranteeing 4th of July parade sponsorships.

[00:38:30] Marrying Diligence and Integration – The shift from waiting until closing to starting integration planning before LOI, including how Rockwell pairs each integration leader with a corresponding person on the target side.

[00:46:00] Continuous Learning Through Retrospectives – How Rockwell conducts retrospectives after every deal phase—not immediately after closing, but six months to a year later when they can truly assess what worked.

[00:49:00] AI's Impact on M&A – Sharon's perspective on how AI is changing deal flow and diligence processes, plus a cautionary tale about AI hallucinations incorrectly identifying a public company as private.

[00:52:00] Data Beyond Financials – Why corp dev leaders should track employee retention rates, promotion rates, new product introduction velocity, and customer complaints as cultural success indicators.

Questions, comments, concerns?
Follow Kison Patel for behind-the-scenes insights on modern M&A.