Know the Deal. Episode 4

Victoria Pelletier became one of the youngest COOs in the country at 24. More than 40 acquisitions later, she is known as the Turnaround Queen, and she argues that most deals succeed or fail for a single reason: the people. Pelletier has been a COO, president, and CEO across companies ranging from a few hundred employees to nearly half a million. She joins Katya Fisher and John Lindsey to dig into the part of dealmaking the spreadsheets miss, which is everything that happens after the merger closes. They cover why change management has to start before the ink dries, how culture clashes quietly erase the value a deal was supposed to create, the warning signs that make her walk away, and why she is skeptical of companies blaming layoffs on AI.