The most difficult part of any corporate merger is the culture. It's not the finances, it's not the technology - it's definitively the people.
“You get so confident about things, willing to do anything to acquire companies, but you still have to do your analysis to see, ‘Does it really fit?’ In my experience, the biggest potential problem is always culture.” - Charles Schwab
If your organization is considering acquiring or merging with another organization, LEAD can help you to avoid the people pitfalls that so often get overlooked in the process. You're going to do your financial due-diligence, your technical due-diligence possibly engineering due-diligence. Have you given any thought to doing a systematic cultural due-diligence? Having a people and culture expert walk through the process alongside your team is an invaluable asset that helps your team navigate the most complex part of the merger, the people.
Schedule a meeting with a LEAD Advisor today to discuss your current situation and see how we can help.
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Before engaging in a full cultural integration program, time must be spent understanding the current state of the merging organizations and of each of their leadership teams. Every merger is different and involves very distinct challenges and personalities. Several meetings will be dedicated to understanding the situation and the key players involved. At the end of this phase, a high-level cultural integration road map will be created.
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During this phase, a key player analysis will be conducted, a communications calendar will be designed, and a buy-side cultural assessment will be created. Before news of the merger is made public, a leadership communications strategy will be created to ensure that employees on both sides receive communication in a timely and effective manner.
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During this phase, you get to decide how deeply you would like the LEAD team to engage with you. We can remain in the background and provide assessment help (measuring the new culture and key players), or we can act as advisors to assist your team as they execute the plan. We can also join you on the front lines and act as activators, actually providing additional boots on the ground during the first month of the integration to make sure the process gets off to a good start.
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The LEAD Team will continue to act in an advisory role beyond the first month of integration to your new leadership and/or to your internal culture champion team to ensure that the people aspect of your merger stays on the right path. The heavy lifting of the human capital aspect of merger should be mostly complete by the end of the first six months of the merger as employees acclimate to new routines, but continual work to further strengthen relationships and remain intentional about how we align the culture and build strong teams will continue to be important. The ongoing support of our team will be on hand every step of the way, checking in on a regular basis to make sure that our people strategies are working as expected and to make any necessary adjustments to build on current success.
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Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 4
People are the most underutilized competitive advantage in the marketplace. But people are complex. LEAD Advisors is a team of people experts. We bring our talents, skills and expertise to your company so that your human capital is the greatest asset your company and not your greatest liability.
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