Leading Through Integration: How to Unify Global Teams Without Slowing Down, with Eran Nachshon

In this podcast episode, Dr. Jonathan H. Westover talks with Eran Nachshon about leading through integration and how to unify global teams without slowing down. Eran Nachshon is the Chief Operating Officer at Rapyd, the global leading financial technology company. He is currently leading the operational transformation of the company following the acquisition of PayU Global Payments Organization (GPO). This move has fortified Rapyd’s global network, specifically cementing its footprint across Latin America and Africa while connecting these high-growth markets to the rest of the world. This is not a standard expansion story. Eran is managing a complex integration where established regional powerhouses must merge into a single global infrastructure. He understands the specific leadership mechanics required to break down silos, maintain speed during complex changes, and build a unified "One Rapyd" culture that bridges diverse high-growth markets. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to the HCI family of podcasts. We're your source for personal, professional, and organizational growth and development. We share our own original research, explore industry trends, and interview executives and thought leaders from across the globe. Join us for practitioner-oriented content around all things leadership, HR, talent management, organizational development, and change management. Maximize your personal and organizational potential with the HCI family of podcasts.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  Iran Neshon, welcome to the conversation today.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Great to be able to have you. Thank you.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you. You're joining us from Israel. I'm in South Salt Lake City in Utah. Today, we're going to be talking about leading through integration, really how to go about unifying global teams without slowing down. That's a big topic. We're going to try to unpack that, really explore what that means, what we mean by integration, and then this whole distributed teams, global reach. When we have global teams, how do we, within that complexity, how do we build and grow without that complexity inherently just slowing us down? How do we continue at the speed of business and responding to the market? As we get started, I wanted to share Iran's bio with everybody. Iran Neshon is the Chief

• 1:24Speaker 00

  Operating Officer at Rapid, the global leading financial technology company. He is currently leading the operational transformation of the company following the acquisition of PayU Global Payments Organization. This move has fortified Rapid's global network, specifically cementing its footprint across Latin America and Africa while connecting these high-growth markets to the rest of the world. This is not a standard expansion story. Iran is managing a complex integration where established regional powerhouses must merge into a single global infrastructure. He will be discussing with us the specific leadership mechanics required to break down silos, maintain speed during complex changes, and how to build a unified one Rapid culture that bridges diverse, high-growth markets. So I'm super thrilled.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Aaron to have this conversation with you. Anything that you would like to highlight about your own background before we dive on it?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, John. I think it's actually pertinent. So I'll go through it in like forty five seconds. I started my my life in my career in the military, but a very hierarchical organization. But I started as a developer and as a teammate of developers and as a product person. So right off the bat, I kind of had a foot in both worlds, if you will, like a very old kind of hierarchical structure, but also a very cutting edge high tech environment. I spent a little time in consulting, so I got to see a lot of different cultures, a lot of different organizations. And then I moved halfway across the world to get my MBA in NYU focusing on finance. And then I joined Barclays. And very apropos, this is the first time I was part of a merger, because as I joined literally that week was

• 2:56Speaker 01

  when Barclays actually acquired Lehman Brothers. So up to now, I have five mergers and acquisition experiences under my belt. And each and every one of them was dramatically different. And I'm looking forward to kind of sharing that experience with you and your listeners. So again, thanks for having me.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, thank you for that background. And yeah, there's totally different types of organizations, different types of approaches, right? When you're in like a military versus, you know, in an acquisition within the financial services industry or whatever, and you've been in that acquisition space multiple times, super fascinating. Yeah, so I can't wait to pick your brain more as we explore this. Maybe to start things off, maybe you can lay out for us your kind of framing, your experience around managing transformation versus expansion. You know, oftentimes, we might kind of interchange those terms. Both both of them might often be used kind of as buzz terms within business. So yeah, like

• 3:50Speaker 00

  within the current context of Rapid, how are you looking at this integration piece, you know, within perhaps the context of transformation, or perhaps separated from transformation?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  I think it's a great question. I think the the natural kind of go to place to most people when they think about a merger or an acquisition is, okay, let's expand, you know, instead of of growing the organization organically, let's buy another company and you know, you check the box. So Rapid has gone through a very interesting journey, and we've gone through the hyper growth So we know how to add a lot of people and for us, especially the recent acquisition is not about just sheer expansion. There is definitely an element of getting licenses and footprint and regulatory, which is a very big hurdle for payments companies. So I'm not going to say that it is none of that. That would be nonsensical. The transformation bit though comes in from taking different cultures and different skillsets in different markets.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  And then basically transforming them into something that hopefully, and again, I'm going to try to stay away as much as I can from buzzwords, but does create a synergy that you could not have achieved otherwise. And just one sentence more about this. If we went and organically gone to Latin America, which we had a presence in and tried to expand, then it would not have been as impactful as joining hands with PayU and kind of getting the best of both worlds. And I think that's where the transformation bit really kicks in.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Excellent. Thank you. And I, and I do think it's important. I, I mean, obviously in, in some cases, in some sense, it's just semantics. Like I guess it means whatever it means for whatever context we happen to be in. We have to own the terms we have to own, meaning we assign to the terms. Um, but I, I do think it's really important, you know, to think about it in terms of any time there's an acquisition. You know, of course, expansion is happening and of course, transformation uh needs to occur. If, as I mentioned, kind of in the introduction, with Rapid, what you're trying to do is you're trying to create one unified culture, right? You're trying to take two separate entities, you're trying to now bring them together. And you're trying to create one, one combined organization, one culture. That's really, really hard to do.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  Uh, anyone who's been, anyone who's been through that process, and now you've been through it many times, but like anyone who's been through that process, knows the heartburn involved, like the, the pain that often is involved. And oftentimes it's not handled well, frankly. And oftentimes there's, there really is a lot of pain. There's a lot of carnage, frankly. Um, and, and a lot of, uh, a lot of people just don't make it through the gauntlet of, of an acquisition. Um, for, for a variety of reasons. Um, talk through that with us about like how you're trying to um orchestrate, you know, this, this expansion and transformation to bring together, you know, this, this, these two separate. Organizations into this one global unified team.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm happy to do that. Um, there's quite a lot to unpack, so I'll try to kind of keep it in pieces and then kind of have you

• 6:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  fall off on where you think is most interesting. I think there's some basics that hold true and I think there's some things that you need to be careful of. And there's something that sounds kind of counterintuitive. If you come with a playbook, that's that's good. If you stick to your playbook, no matter what, that's disastrous. Like you shouldn't come in thinking, I'll figure out, I'll wing it. But if you say, I've done four acquisitions, I'm doing another one, I know what to do, step aside, you're wholeheartedly and completely missing the point. And you will miss a lot of good opportunities to really create something that's more than the sum of its parts. Um, for us, the beginning was to listen. So even after acquisition, that took us a long time to complete against regulatory reasons.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  We did not come in guns blazing, fledgehammer at hand. And just to give context, one of our core beliefs is to build bold, to move fast. We are a high-tech startup company. We like to run. And in this case, we've actually taken a long time to do the post-acquisition due diligence, which is really one of the first points. You think about an acquisition, you think, okay, you guys have done the full due diligence, right? You know everything and it's almost patently never correct. Nothing to say about bad intentions or poor work done by a nobody.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  There's a big difference between seeing something on the shelf and then actually getting engaged and understanding and working with the people. And the thing you need to do at first is genuinely to listen, even if you're the subject matter expert, because there's a lot they bring to the table. And one of the things that you hear is the music. You hear how they work. You hear how they respond to things. And then there's a lot of technical stuff, if it's if it's incentive plans and retention and all of that. But through this process, they get to understand a little bit who you are and you get to understand who they are. And for me, I think one of the most critical items, and again, these are allegedly self-evident and obvious, is the time you invest into it. Like we went on multiple visits in the last three months, we had six of our senior people go there every couple of weeks.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  And it's beyond showing presence, it's showing care, it's showing priorities. And I'll I'll pause after this to kind of give you a chance to

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  think about where you want to. When I got there as the head of HR and as the the chief operating officer, I again, I have a little bit of a contrarian view. We'll talk about a little bit later. I didn't do a town hall. I did not get on a stage and have like an automatic translation to Spanish because I don't speak Spanish, which is very unfortunate. What I did was a different approach. I opened my calendar for six hours every day and I basically encouraged anybody who wants to sit down and talk to me for ten fifteen minutes. And John, I had thirty five one on ones. And in those thirty five one on ones, there was a chance for me to communicate and to connect to people, to hear what they're concerned about and to kind of give them the level of truth, the communication that they're so thirsty, which you can't really get from a town hall because you feel like a town hall is a lot more about the person speaking than the people listening. And here, that connection, I think, made a world difference. I'll pause here.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, first, let me start there because I completely agree. Um, I mean, a town hall can be great, but a town hall in and of itself, um, which is often where it ends. Like, let's be honest, like oftentimes they'll come in, they'll do a town hall and then they say, okay, we're done. We've communicated.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Check.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  And and exactly, right? And and so if that's what you do, it's almost demeaning. Like, it's it's almost, um, like, it's it's really almost infuriating, um, to a lot of people when that's all you do because it really, it it it seems like a checkmark. It seems like, uh, superficial, right? And so

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Like talking down to people.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So what you did is like, there's nothing wrong with doing town halls, but what you need to do if you do a town hall is to follow it up with basically what you did, right? Is is do like the actual deep work, like the more intentional, um, like face to face work, right? You have to do the one on ones. You have to do the visits. You have to do like the real intentional, um, person to person work, right? Um, and so that's what you did. And that's why it was so meaningful because you're right. It's not about you. It's about them. And so often executives, for whatever their intention may be, and their intentions may be perfectly good, um, but they don't necessarily understand how it's perceived, what they're doing, right? And so it's not about you. It's about them and you need to hear them and you need to listen to them.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  You need to understand how they're dealing with things. And then you can hear all sorts of really good feedback. And a town hall is is unidirectional. Like, you're talking at them. Not hearing anything back, right? And so you need to be able to get the information and the feedback and and understand like how it's impacting them, especially like when there's an acquisition and now you're you're you're you're absorbing like this new this new area and there's like new local people in a totally different location, like maybe a different culture, different language, like different socio economic and geopolitical like dynamic, right? Like you need to be able to recognize and honor local expertise and like all of that, right?

• 11:20Speaker 00

  And and you can't do that if you just swoop in, do a quick town hall and check, you know, think you're good, but that that's so often what happens.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  No, I completely agree. And I have to say that sometimes it's okay to employ these little tricks. I mean, everything's above board, but Columbia is a very early morning culture, which I was not aware of. So I found myself, um, John, second day in, jet legged, like, you know what, uh, in Bogota, twenty something, like two thousand something meters above the ground, going to a CrossFit class at six AM with one of the key leaders there. And and the bonding and the connection and I also like working out, I was completely gassed out because that was not great for me. But it's one of those things that kind of builds a bond in a sense that I'm more I'm more than just coming in to check a box. I'm here because I want to I've seen you in a natural habitat and this is a very big thing for that person.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  And so those little stories, they kind of river break. And if you do the extra work of finding out a little bit about these people and you come in and you're saying to someone, well, I understand your company, your your family, it just moved from Cartagena into here. How was that transition? I've been to Cartagena, it's great. It's not just about making friends. It's not about just being empathetic, which by the way, was a great episode. It's about creating that connection and making sure people understand that this is more than just checking boxes, which we keep going back into. It's really understanding where they're coming from. And then the conversation naturally evolves into what are your strengths? And for instance, that person came from finance and moved into financial operations and she brought like a wealth of knowledge with her and tapping into it and and in kind of empowering her. And this connects to something that that we'll talk about later.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  This was a natural progression and one of the things that's most important in a book to succeed is. You can talk all the talk you want. You gotta walk the walk. And by that, I mean, John, we've made her a senior leader in our existing organization. And even though the acquisition is from one side to the other, she's managing people at the murder ship. And when I came there and I did a little speech with some folks, one of the things that you could just see their eyes lit up was when I said, guys, I want to take a step back and say something real quick. We have two business units. Both of them are managed by people who are a part of an M and A. So those two CEOs are now running these acquisitions. The most senior person in my team are a result of an acquisition. This is not a hypothetical situation. They've been with us for over five years. They're thriving. They're doing more than they've done in their previous lives.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  This exists. And then when we did this with one person there, you could see that people are like, okay, this is real. And I think that is critical.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  Uh huh, uh huh. Yeah. Yes. Good. I love that. I love that. I love, I love the intentional, meaningful connection that you're doing, even though you don't, you're not necessarily a morning person, six AM. I, I, I feel for you because I wouldn't like that either. But, but you, you know, you're sacrificing and you're, and you're actually going to make meaningful connection and that's what matters. And people know the difference, right? They really, they, they can see the difference a mile away between someone who actually wants to have that genuine connection, who really values them as a person versus those who don't. It's, it's just so clearly obvious to people when that's not the case. So how, how have you, so, so you've also talked about this, this local expertise piece and, and really building up

• 14:30Speaker 00

  those, you know, who are part of the acquired and that is so critical too. I mean, I, I, I'm sure you have so many stories. I have so many stories of how that, when that doesn't happen. And usually it leads to all sorts of problems and epic failures. When, when you don't utilize the, the local expertise and you're not leveraging the, the leadership on the ground in the locations, you know, uh, where, where you're operating. And it seems like a no brainer, like it just seems obvious, but it, it often just doesn't happen for a variety of reasons. And so, yeah, yeah, you, you just provide great examples of how you can definitely empower those.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  Those individuals and and it's better for everyone. It's better for them. It's better for for for those, you know, the acquired organizations. Now you have models of other, so other employees get to look at at them and see the opportunity and and everyone feels integrated and involved. And and it's just, it's it's just better for everybody, right? Um, one of the biggest challenges, I think, anytime you're involved in an acquisition, anytime you're talking about this kind of integration piece. Um, and going through this transformational process around, you know, unifying cultures and whatnot. Anytime you're dealing with more complex organizational systems, right? Is just trying to maintain the speed of business. Um, how how do you move forward without like slowing down?

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Uh, when you're trying to now integrate and you're trying to essentially onboard all these new people into this new system, into the, in this new culture? How how have you approached that?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  That's a really good question, because again, I don't think there's a classic answer. And this is where I said I'm a little bit of a contrarian. I think you gotta go into it as an adult and understand that some things are not gonna go your way. Um, I've heard other people talk about, you know, I don't wanna lose a single soul. I don't wanna miss one person. I don't wanna upset one client. And it's definitely a way to go. I'm not saying, I definitely don't have the the playbook. We all know the statistics, somewhere between fifty to seventy, some say higher of M and A percentage fail. And a lot of times it is due to one of two extremes, either my way or the highway, right off the bat. I don't care. I don't listen. It doesn't matter at all. And the other one is, whatever you are, delicate flower, you're gonna stay as is, and I'm just here next to you.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  And again, I'm not judging, uh, I'm not the world leading expert. I think striking the balance obviously makes the most sense, but you have to own the fact that in some cases you will slow down. And one of the talks I said in those in those thirty five meetings is I said to people, in some cases, you are going to go back. You have automation right now. You're gonna move to manual, but I need you to hear me and I need you to see what I'm saying and what we've done. We are a technology company. We believe in automation. We believe in AI. This is how we live. We have had, two years ago, zero percent automation in one field that was critical for the conversation. I just don't wanna get into. Too much jargon because boring and now we're at ninety three percent. I know that you're at ninety eight percent. I'm going to take you down, but trust me that my trajectory forward is much faster.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  And one of the things that we are willing to say and do is to say, there is a probability, not our aim, not our goal, but there's a probability that we will lose some clients. Because we are trying to go much, much faster. Instead of doing X plus Y, I'm trying to get to X plus. But our core belief is, once we do that, we'll be able to offer clients a much more robust offering. And you know, I don't believe in treating adults as children and telling them nothing is going to change. You absolutely will change things. You just need to be aware of what you're changing. You need to be aware of the risks that you're taking. And for me, John, the critical part, and I know it sounds very trite, it's to get their buy in. And this person who's built that system with her own ten fingers said, I understand I'm gonna, her image was interesting.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  I understand I'm gonna go eight floors below of where I am now, but I understand how this elevator that you're building is gonna shoot me up. And once you have that, it's okay if you slow down for a little bit because the future is so much brighter. And that's one of the things that we're kind of willing to do in our build bold uh kind of view to say, we're willing to take some risks, not outside risk, reasonable risks. Because if we just try to hold everything, you're going to lose. There's no question about it.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, just being open and honest, right? Having communication about it. So the buy in piece, I mean, let's be honest, not everyone's always gonna buy in, right? And sometimes there's a misalignment and sometimes that means people are going to choose to leave or or you know, or gonna be asked to leave.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  But like, I really like how you said you're gonna just treat people like adults. I often tell people, I just, I just wish it's, it's unfortunately, I tell my kids, like, it's, it's far too common that like in business, uh like or you know, as adults, it's far too common that we function as though we're in high school or junior high. Like, we don't act mature, like, we don't act like we're adults. Um, you would think we would, but we don't. And so like, let's just actually be adults and let's just treat each other like we're adults. And that doesn't mean we're always going to agree. And I love the idea of buy in, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're always going to buy into what I think or what. What we're doing or what the vision is, but at least we can be adults and at least we can respect each other and at least I can be open and communicate with you and then we can either

• 19:39Speaker 00

  choose to work together or we can be informed and then not, right? But at least we can be respectful, you're right.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And one of the things, let's just give you one time example, you know, there's always this fear and it's change and buy-ins and people leaving and it's fine, it's going to happen. No one retains a hundred percent that unless you just bought your sister spinning image company, which sounds weird, but we spoke to some people and we asked them a very simple question of like, what is it that you want to do that you couldn't do because of the previous owner? And this is not a made up example, I swear. One of the things we came up with was on the finance department and it basically said, there's a limitation that was put on us that was completely, I don't want to say arbitrary, it kind of fit the general mold of the much, much bigger company that owned them before, but it doesn't make sense to us. And they walked us through it. And I remember my CEO, um, Alil Stumman said, let's do it. And they did it the following day. And, and John,

• 20:28Speaker 01

  the thing that's amazing is not the savings and the, not that, it's the light in those people's eyes when they saw there was no like 15 board approval. It was just do it tomorrow. We're going to track it for a few weeks. If it works, great. If it doesn't, we'll fix back. And so people have great ideas. They've been working there for ages. Not everybody's fossilized and like, what is, whatever happened yesterday, that's what's going to happen. But people have this like passion and if you, if you tap into it, then really great things happen. And that's exactly what you said. It's, it's kind of working with people as adults and telling them, if you could run the world, if you were the CEO of your function, what is it that you would do today? Some ideas we can't implement and it's okay, but some of them were like that. It's brilliant. And that kind of dovetails into what I said about the transformation because expansion is, I don't care. You'll do what I said. And here it's like, wait a second, you're, you could do this here? Like in this country? Yes,

• 21:12Speaker 01

  we could do it. In that country, we can't. They're like, then let's do it. I didn't know that. I wasn't an expert in each and every one of the six countries in Latin America. So it's about that. It's, it's, this is what you get for listening. Genuinely, this is your payoff, just for listening.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Awesome. Oh, I love it. I love it. This has been such a fun conversation. I think we could go on and on, but I do know at the time, I probably need to let you go and get on with your evening. Before we wrap things up for today, I just wanted to give you a chance to share with the audience how they can connect with you, find out more about your work, your team, and then Give us a final word for today.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm not hugely active on social media. I kind of put my head down and do work, but I'm definitely LinkedIn. Um, drop a, drop me a DM or if anything you want to follow up, I'm, I'm always happy to, to kind of reach out and help folks. I think final word for me is that we all have to understand this requires a certain amount of courage. It's stepping outside of comfort zone for both sides. And I think there is a leap of faith that has to be done. And if you do it sometimes, to be very honest, you're going to fall flat on your face. You have to have the grit to get up and try to leap again. And it's no one's fault that someone else didn't meet you halfway. But if you try again, people will buy in into that. And so I would say, listen and have faith.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  Love it. I love it. Thank you so much. It's been just a pleasure. I encourage the audience to reach out, get connected, find out more about what Aaron and his, his team, uh, their app can do for you. And as always, I hope everyone can stay healthy and safe and you find meaning and purpose at work each and every day. And I hope you all have a great week.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Thanks for joining us for this episode of the podcast. We hope you stay healthy and safe and please join us again soon.