Finding the Freedom to Be Yourself

When you’re allowed to be yourself and play to your natural strengths, the difference you feel is astounding. This is true even for those who have found success otherwise. Take Hutton Henry for example.

He didn’t feel comfortable in school. He didn’t fit in the corporate world. That didn’t mean he didn’t meet benchmarks or find himself achieving, it just meant he couldn’t be everything he wanted to be.

Now, Hutton is the CEO and Founder of his own business, Beyond M&A, and the author of two books: People First and Diversity of Action. He is finally thriving, and he’s using the knowledge he gained from his personal journey to empower others. 

Hutton uses a practice called technology due diligence. The goal is to place the people who build tech solutions first and show investors the value behind such teams. Kolbe is part of the process, and in this episode, Hutton shares how taking the Kolbe assessment changed his and his clients’ business perspective and how he helps others use their strengths to reach their full potential. 

Host: David Kolbe (8273)

Guest-at-a-Glance 

 Name: Hutton Henry (2295)

What he does: Hutton is the CEO and founder of Beyond M&A.

Company: Beyond M&A 

Noteworthy: Hutton works with VC, private equity, and corporate investors, assessing tech teams on their behalf. The practice is called technology due diligence.

Where to find Hutton: LinkedIn 

🎙️You may still be on the path to discovering your strengths, and Kolbe can help guide you toward your true self by understanding why you acted a certain way in the past and determining your natural way of engaging in professional and personal interactions. ''I always thought I wasn't doing well at school because I'd had a weird upbringing, and no one was watching. So I was being quite delinquent at school. But what I got from the Kobe result is that I don't need that type of very structured academia. So it changed my story from somebody who could not do something because of a disadvantage in education to this quite suited me; I just didn't realize that. So you could have given me the best school in the world, and I still would've done the same,'' shares Hutton. 

🎙️ People Over Technology and How Kolbe Helps Teams Embrace Individual Strengths 

''The technology is the tangible output, and that's the thing that you can track and measure. But if we don't look after the teams, you will find that they start to worry. And there are so many things that can happen in an M&A transaction.

Our investors are people-focused, and they want to look after. So, it's a relationship in the first place to agree to be invested in or acquired. And so, both parties want to relate with each other. 

So we have a pre-deal position and help companies after the deal has been completed. We will run Kolbe assessments before a deal for certain investors who are open to this and where it's appropriate to the deal. So everyone will look at the sensitivity of what's going to happen and say, ‘Well, you know what? It would be interesting to know what that is.’ 

I'm looking for a couple of factors. Number one is innovation. That's what investors are looking for. They tend to buy something that's working well and want to scale. The other piece is systemization. So that's the Follow Thru aspect. 

So if we can look at an entire team and say to them with data, ‘You're strong at this, and that's how we can create extra value,’ it's a wonderful place to be. So it's not pointing fingers or personal; it's looking at the team as a whole.''