Step 4: Provide M&A Integration Training

Playing Russian Roulette with the Merged Company's Future at Stake

An integration is no place for on-the-job training. There's too much on the line. 

Consolidating two companies isn’t anything like running the day-to-day business. There's little in the routine operation of a business that prepares its managers to run an M&A integration. Even crusty, battle-scarred, seasoned veterans with years of experience under their belts can be rookies in this situation. It's not enough just to throw your A-Team at the integration if they have to essentially feel their way along. Undoubtedly, they will give it their best effort, but it is like they are playing a game of organizational Russian roulette. They are relying on good luck and if they don't get it, the consequences can be grave.

Integration team members may not receive a second chance to make the consolidation work. At the very least, their learning curve is likely to lengthen the transition period at a point in time when additional days, weeks, and months are directly translated into lost productivity and perhaps, many millions of dollars wasted …

Hard Proof M&A Gets a Bum Rap

M&A Gets a Bum Rap, reveals:

1. How a minority of buyers generate the majority of M&A losses
2. Who has created the myth that most mergers fail
3. What five characteristics are shared by buyers that incur titanic post-merger losses
4. When acquirers typically make the best and worst deals
5. Why post-merger losses are often due to the very problems executives anticipated rather than the acquisitions themselves
6. Why “glamour acquirers” tend to perform poorly after their deals
7. How a merger can fail on paper, but not actually be a failure
8. Why extreme positive or extreme negative M&A research results are not credible
9. Why blanket assertions about M&A failure rates are not based on sound logic
10. How the AOL/Time Warner merger, widely regarded as one of the worst mergers in history, actually benefited AOL shareholders

Today's Deals Ain't Your Daddy's M&A

THE BIG SHIFT

In today’s business world the game is growth. Ramping up. Getting bigger to get better. Some companies go at it conservatively, in incremental fashion. Other outfits shoot the works. Their game plan aims at exponential growth, and that usually means mergers and acquisitions . . . growing by leaps and bounds . . . combining operations to get maximum market share, economies of scale, payback on technology investments. In other words, major upsizing, in high gear.

WHAT"S DRIVING THIS BIG SHIFT TOWARD DOMINATING INSTEAD OF DOWNSIZING?

Well, it’s that same old one-syllable word: change. But instead of struggling to cope with change, companies now are trying to conquer it. Today’s focus is on building. Buying. And because the world’s new, faster metabolism is catching hold, mergers are back. Sure, shrinking and trimming will continue. We still need to squeeze out costs and soup up performance. But everybody’s doing that. And most folks have figured out that . . .

10 Key Questions to Answer Before a Post-Merger Integration

More than 30 years of experience with mergers and acquisitions has taught us some important lessons.  For example, here are Ten Value-Accelerating Questions you should ask yourself before beginning the delicate process of combining companies.

1.    How will you organize the transition process so that it's fast and focused?
2.    How can you engage both sides so that you benefit from your combined knowledge and experience without getting mired down in politics and tradeoffs?
3.    Do you have a methodology and tools for launching transition teams, measuring progress, and holding people accountable for hitting targeted objectives? ...
 

Divested: What Do You Do?

Careers just aren't what they used to be, are they?

You join some outfit, and the next thing you know the part you work for gets pulled out and plugged into a completely different company.  You get no say in the deal.

Makes it tough to plan your job future because organizations won't sit still.  They're constantly reshaping themselves.  Today's business landscape keeps shifting as companies merge, restructure, reengineer, downsize, outsource, and divest.

As usual, people get caught in the middle.

Of course, sometimes it works out great.  On other occasions it causes a career relapse.  Almost always it's a gut-wrenching experience that puts you on the edge of your seat until you figure out just how you'll be affected …
 

Merger Motives: The Logic Behind Every Acquisition

A strategically savvy, financially sound, and operationally smart deal can still fail because acquisitions are fundamentally human transactions. And whenever human beings are involved, there’s always the potential for complexity and mistakes.

So why, knowing that mergers and acquisitions can create difficult-to-manage problems, do organizations continue to do deals?  Three reasons.

1.    Growth: Many organizations are having difficulty growing at an acceptable rate by internal means alone. They simply can’t capture market share, introduce new products, acquire new customers, conquer new geographies, or eliminate the competition quickly enough without joining forces.

2.    Consolidation: Another reason companies merge or acquire is overcapacity. In many sectors we just have too many providers offering too many products or services. Consolidation is simply a mechanism we use to re-balance supply and demand. When competitors consolidate, the market becomes more efficient …