In M&A It is essential to avoid damaging the value of the deal. It is therefore essential to spend time planning and establish your processes. My experience has shown that the most frequently encountered issues revolve around people, how they react to change as well as their resistance to it and how they react when something doesn’t work the way they intended.
One of the main things we do for our clients is helping them set up a process that will allow them to identify potential issues early and address them promptly. This can be accomplished by holding an annual IMO meeting and working streams to monitor progress and escalate issues and risks to SteerCo.
Once the process for tackling problems is established It’s crucial to concentrate on execution. It’s essential to ensure that everyone knows what they are expected to do and how they’ll be evaluated, and the time frame for when. Also, it should clearly state accountability (i.e. taking ownership of end results) and the authority to make decisions for the entire company.
It is essential to ensure that the CEO and top management can devote at minimum 90 percent of their time working on core business concerns and avoid getting distracted by integration activities. A good way to do this is to select an experienced leader to oversee the Decision Management Office (IMO) who will be able to triage decisions and oversee the work streams. It could be someone from the organization that acquired the company, or it can be a rising star within the merged company that has the backing of their boss who is willing to make this commitment.