A fundamental rule in M&A is to make sure that you don’t devalue value, therefore you need to spend the time to develop your processes and plan to deal with the possibility of things going wrong. From my experience, the most prevalent issues are around people, how they respond to change and their reluctance to change and how they respond when something doesn’t work the way they expected.
We assist our clients to set up the system that will allow them to spot issues early and respond quickly. It could be for instance, having weekly meetings during which the IMO and functional work streams review the progress made against the plan and escalate issues and risks to SteerCo.
When the strategy for dealing with issues is in place It’s essential to focus on execution. It’s crucial to ensure that everyone knows what they are expected to do and how they will be evaluated, and the time frame for when. It also includes clearly publishing accountability (i.e. the ownership of the final results) and the authority to make decisions for the entire company.
It is crucial to ensure that the CEO and upper management can spend at least 90 percent of their time working on core business concerns and avoid getting distracted by integration tasks. A good way to do this is to choose an experienced leader to oversee the Decision Management Office (IMO), who can triage decisions and oversee the work streams. This person could be from the acquiring company or be a rising star in the merged organization who has the support of their boss.
