Making Acquisitions Successful
RESEARCH REGULARLY CONFIRMS that 80% of mergers and acquisitions fail to live up to expectations. The Sunday Times reports that 61% even fail to cover the cost of the capital invested. Typical major causes include:
- A clash of cultures
- A clash of management
- A loss of clear identity
- Organisational drift
- Uncertainty about the future
- A departure of key people.
The risk of failure can be significantly reduced if adequate planning takes place covering the post-acquisition management of people, communication and culture.The business leaders at LeaderShape have extensive experience of making acquisitions work far after the deal has been completed.
Top five actions that enable success:
- Creating and communicating certainty about the future as soon as possible
- Addressing the new organisation structure and confirming quickly
- Going out of your way to acknowledge the positive aspects of the acquired organisation
- Clearly communicating expectations Understanding the cultural strengths and differences
- Cross-business task forces reporting to the CEO responsible for cultural alignment or integration.
LeaderShape supports this programme through:
Its proprietary LOCS culture audit that:
- Compares the cultures of the organisations and identifies the ideal culture(s) that will unify the organisation
- Highlights cultural issues that need to be addressed
- Makes an independent assessment of key people
- Objective facilitation of cross-business workshops
- One-to-one coaching of key people in new or changed roles and relationships Advice on communication.
