Mergers And Acquisitions: Ensuring Success After The First 90 Days

Angelica Carr, founder of Aim Business Coaching, explores how companies can ensure a smooth and swift transition during M&A deals.

YOU’VE SIGNED HEADS, done your due diligence, survived legals, agreed warranties and indemnities, and signed the deal. Money, careers and much else are at stake and your employees, clients and competition are watching you intently.

Turning a merger into a success takes tremendous skill and often a very different management style than you’re used to. How can you avoid the value of your deal being crushed? After all, M&A statistics show that eight out of 10 mergers fail.

To improve the odds there needs to be equal emphasis on project and people management. Never lose sight of productivity, being ahead of competition and profit, but equally never forget that without people and culture, the deal is nothing.

Some of the key elements to focus on should be planning, communication, culture, change management, speed, and talent retention. And the first months of the transition time are the most important.

Planning 

Before announcing the deal to your people, make sure you can offer a strong and united leadership with clear direction. Consolidating two boards is political and complex so expect to devote a fair chunk of time to this in a private off-site setting and ideally with some external guidance. Make clear decisions on who reports to whom and specify everybody’s roles and responsibilities. This will get harder the longer you wait.

Establish a set of guiding principles or values that all decisions are based on. And using the outcome of your culture due diligence, decide which differences are critical to the deal. Which cultural shifts will be necessary?

And crucially, agree on a sharp integration strategy using a process that balances competing priorities between scope, time, cost, resources, and risk. Define exactly how you will create value and then never take your eyes off these synergy-drivers.