When it comes to growing a business, acquisitions can add capabilities and customers but can also complicate workflows and stymie innovation. Decision-making slows down, priorities become blurred and progress stalls as teams await sign-offs and approvals rather than acting. Such problems are common in organisations that grow quickly, but they are not inevitable.
Hootsuite, the global social-media-management platform, is no stranger to managing these risks, having made 15 acquisitions to fuel its growth over the past 15 years. Most recently, in 2024, the company acquired Talkwalker, a consumer-intelligence platform. Here, Irina Novoselsky, Hootsuite’s CEO since 2023, shares insights on maintaining pace and protecting culture while merging business operations.
Uncover the culture you already have
“The culture is already in the company,” Novoselsky says. “What leaders should do is remove the blocks so it can breathe.”
Many companies respond to post-merger complexity with a fresh set of slogans or a new mission statement. But Novoselsky advises a different approach. Start by looking for friction, she says. Where are backlogs and queues forming? Where does customer feedback stall? Which handovers repeatedly trip people up? Then identify the behaviours that were already working before the merger and make them easy to copy. Speaking of the Talkwalker integration, she says: “I didn’t create anything new. We simply enabled all these smart people to feel comfortable.”
I want people to challenge me and tell me where I’m wrong
In the integration phase, leaders may be tempted to impose ways of working on the newly acquired workforce. But Novoselsky prefers to find two or three effective practices from each side, implement them quickly and let results do the convincing.
“People mirror what they see,” she says. “So my value-add was to put the right team in place and then say, ‘This is what we stand for, this is the pace we move at.’” For Novoselsky, that means establishing short decision cycles, visibly empowering teams to act and make decisions without seeking permission and focusing on outcomes rather than presentation.
CEO takeaway
Run a 30-day block audit with managers from both businesses. Ask for two obstacles that currently slow work down and two existing practices that are worth imitating. Commit to removing the obstacles within 60 days and implement any successful practices across the combined team. Publish performance before and after the integration so progress is visible.
A weekly rhythm that lifts the bar
Although company culture can flourish when colleagues collaborate and spend time together, frequent meetings rarely produce engaged and productive employees. However, meetings can be helpful in keeping everyone on track, so long as they follow a predictable cadence and are used to celebrate good work or set expectations for the week, for instance.
At Hootsuite, Novoselsky has introduced a 15-minute weekly ‘all-hands’. “I don’t move this call,” she stresses. “If I’m on a plane, somebody else does it. It’s happening.” Novoselsky usually hosts the meeting, but the spotlight is on the team. The format is snappy and the focus is that week’s success stories, from HR’s recent recruitment wins to the finance team’s efforts to close the books in seven days rather than 10.
The key is to show, not tell. For her part, Novoselsky often captures positive client feedback and plays it back to the team. “It’s like a boost of caffeine,” she says. “It’s really magical when you hear your peers being recognised, especially working remotely, in a world that’s so virtual and siloed. Those 15 minutes provide a little adrenaline spike.”
The ritual of a weekly all-hands welcomes newly acquired staff into a common rhythm without heavy onboarding. It also quietly rewires status across the organisation. Wins from finance and back-office functions sit alongside wins from product teams. This helps to prevent silos and makes high standards contagious. Crucially, the meeting is short and fixed. People plan around it. It signals that everyone’s time matters and that improvement is everyone’s job.
CEO takeaway
Consider scheduling a consistent weekly broadcast at your own organisation. Keep it to a quarter of an hour. Rotate the host when you travel so the drumbeat never falters. Ask each executive to contribute one recognition each month and one working demo per quarter. Over three to six months, these examples will raise the bar.
The power of saying ‘no’
As organisations grow, leaders’ priorities can expand and become unmanageable. For executives struggling to maintain focus, Novoselsky’s solution is simple: “I’m a big believer in saying ‘no’. The bigger your company gets, the more focused you have to be and the consequence is that you may have to say ‘no’ to certain customers. That’s important if you wish to grow with the ones that are core to what you’re trying to do.”
Her advice extends to employees, too. “You need to give people permission to say ‘no’ – or to say, ‘If you’re taking this on, what are you going to take off your priority list?’”
A visible trade-off log turns making difficult choices into a shared discipline rather than a private negotiation. The practice matters most when two roadmaps are competing after an acquisition. Teams can see what will not work now and why, reducing the number of side conversations and stress that can slow down progress. The habit also sharpens strategic thinking. If a proposal cannot survive the question of what must give way, it’s probably not a priority.
CEO takeaway
Pilot a 90-day trade-off register. For each proposal, record the owner, determine how any actions will impact current priorities and clarify expected results. Refuse proposals that do not name which goals or responsibilities will be dropped to compensate for additional workloads. Review the register in your weekly staff meetings so decisions are clear to everyone involved.
No room for ego
All of this – the new weekly meetings, feeling comfortable with saying ‘no’, adapting to a faster-moving environment – is significantly easier when CEOs lead with humanity and humility, says Novoselsky.
“I want people to challenge me and tell me where I’m wrong,” she says. “The power of 1,500 employees is way stronger than that of one person.” Novoselsky frequently invites in-house experts to executive leadership meetings, regardless of their level in the organisation, and aims to create safe spaces for them to point out where the leadership team might be wrong.
You need to give permission for people to say ‘no’
Even when people leave the business, she makes a point of separating role fit from human worth. “If you don’t perform, you’re out. But, for us, part of an authentic culture is recognising that just because this isn’t the right home for someone, that doesn’t mean they’re bad at what they’re doing. You can be very effective and also kind.”
And, when it comes to hiring, she is looking for people who embody those same qualities of high standards and teamwork. “I count how many times they say ‘we’ or ‘team’ rather than saying ‘I did this,’” she says. “A lot of people talk about activities, not outcomes – for example, ‘I worked on this project,’ versus, ‘We did this and saw a 50% increase in that.’ If they’re not outcome-driven, it’s not the right fit.”
CEO takeaway
Add a rotating ‘chief contrarian’ seat to your staff meeting so someone is responsible for probing assumptions each week. Standardise exit communications about role fit and stage needs. Add three prompts to executive interviews: lessons learned in your first job, one quantified result and one “we” win.
Closing the loop
Innovating at pace and creating a culture that works post-acquisition cannot happen by accident, but it doesn’t have to be rocket science. Doing so is a matter of making good choices and repeating them until they become habits. Novoselsky’s strategy is deliberately simple: identify useful behaviours that already exist and remove any roadblocks, schedule a weekly pulse gathering where good work is celebrated, refine your focus as business needs evolve, accept that you’ll have to make trade-offs and insist on high standards but always treat people well.
These practices have guided Hootsuite through its most recent acquisition and provide a template for any future mergers or workforce integrations. CEOs wrestling with post-acquisition problems would do well to adopt Novoselsky’s approach. Hootsuite’s success in maintaining pace and innovation post-combination suggests that, as companies grow larger, it’s often the small things that make the biggest difference.
When it comes to growing a business, acquisitions can add capabilities and customers but can also complicate workflows and stymie innovation. Decision-making slows down, priorities become blurred and progress stalls as teams await sign-offs and approvals rather than acting. Such problems are common in organisations that grow quickly, but they are not inevitable.
Hootsuite, the global social-media-management platform, is no stranger to managing these risks, having made 15 acquisitions to fuel its growth over the past 15 years. Most recently, in 2024, the company acquired Talkwalker, a consumer-intelligence platform. Here, Irina Novoselsky, Hootsuite's CEO since 2023, shares insights on maintaining pace and protecting culture while merging business operations.
