Beware of Tripwires: Navigating the Invisible Hazards Through People Centric Focus

At DVG, our mission revolves around finding, acquiring, and growing the small companies that are the core of the American economy. We have learned that fulfilling this mission effectively requires an intense focus on people. This approach not only aligns with our values as an organization, it also acknowledges that in small companies the people matter more than anything else.

Small businesses, particularly those that are on a growth trajectory, are almost always under-resourced. This is not inherently “wrong” but rather a natural side effect of growth: the accounting system worked at $5m of revenue but is insufficient at $20m; a CRM may have been unnecessary when we had 20 key customers in one state, but it becomes imperative when managing 500 customers spread across the US. Small business owners often struggle to keep pace with the evolving and ever-increasing need for resources.

A result of this chronic resource shortage is that people step up to fill the gaps. In all our businesses we encounter dedicated team members who have built deep reservoirs of knowledge, relationships, and experience, playing pivotal roles and driving value for the organization. These key personnel and their relationships within the team are rarely documented and often diverge greatly from the official company organization chart.

A new owner who is fully resourced, hungry, and bursting with well-intentioned ideas on how to make things “better” may be eager to implement rapid and sweeping changes to a business; however, they often do so at their own peril. The intricate web of value drivers that forms the usually invisible foundation of the newly acquired business can quickly become a web of invisible, interpersonal tripwires. If you act without a deep understanding of the people involved, you risk breaking relationships, alienating key leaders without knowing it, and impairing your company before you have even begun.

We believe that if you approach value creation with patience, empathy, transparency, and a people-centric focus, you can harness the power of the team, empower your key value drivers, and set the conditions for the successful addition of new systems and resources.

For us, success means creating value for people through career advancement and financial gain. We can only succeed by focusing on what matters most: our people.