1. If you are contemplating an acquisition, make sure that you’ve done your homework in terms of how and why this makes sense, from a business, financial, and cultural fit perspective. Ensure you are brutally honest in assessing fit, and give your doubters a chance to speak openly, since convincing those most opposed is key to post-acquisition integration success.
2. Assemble a team that has the right set of skills and character to successfully manage both the pre-acquisition due diligence activities and the post-acquisition integration. Ensure that you over-staff, making sure that you have your most talented people and that they have sufficient time freed up to dedicate themselves fully to this important undertaking.
3. Build out a project plan with timelines and milestones, since this too is a project. Don’t be reluctant to pull the plug on the acquisition either, regardless of how far along you are, and how much time and resources you’ve invested, since the post-acquisition costs of failure are a multiple of those incurred pre-acquisition, and may cause additional costs for the existing organization.
4. Focus your efforts on getting to know and build strong relationships with key leaders in the target organization, BUT also with other key players in the organization, including senior technical people; customer services leaders; and of course, the HR function. Doing so will cause them to want to help you make the right decisions and understand where the sacred cows and skeletons in the closet are.
5. Under commit in terms of synergies; completion dates; increased revenues; cost reductions; increased market share; and whatever other rationale you’ve used in justifying the acquisition. The truth is that like an iceberg, when doing an acquisition, you only see what is on the surface. You will have to adjust your decision making many times as you go through the acquisition and the integration, and so should properly educate and prepare key stakeholders so that you end up at worst, achieving the goals and success measures you’ve set for this.
6. Be open to respecting the traditions and culture of the organization being acquired, since it takes time to build trust, and change is hard on trust building and on preserving focus and productivity on the part of acquired and acquiring employees. Have a plan though to move the the acquired organization’s culture and norms to where these need to be, to operate effectively as one team, (and yes, this may mean changing some of the culture and norms, and people in the acquiring organization).
7. Practice the golden rule. Treat others like you would wish to be treated. Also, give others the benefit of doubt. Lots of messages are going to be sent to you as a leader, from many points in the two organizations. Along with many of these though, there will be an agenda. So long as you listen and apply a filter of respect, decency, and of thinking the best about others, in most cases, issues that arise, will be dealt with. If not, you always have the ability to act decisively.
8. Celebrate success and honour the past. As the merged or acquired company begins to fit in, take a moment to celebrate your progress, and to honour the history of both parts of the company. This will be much appreciated by those who are still new to the Company (through being acquired), and will create an even stronger bond between new and old employees and a sense of one team.
9. Finally, be sensitive that this is a time of great upheaval in the markets. Companies undertaking acquisitions will be looking in many cases for synergies and resulting staff reductions. Employees know and fear this. As a result, planners need to think through the headcount implications as much in advance as possible; build out an integration and lay-off strategy with timelines; contract work; completion bonuses, and severance, and need to have a strong, comprehensive, and pro-active communications strategy for getting the right messages to staff. Key amongst these will be what happens to employee jobs in both companies; in what timeframes; how; and with what implications for those whose jobs disappear.
These are exciting times, and a pre-cursor to returning strengthened markets. It’s never been a better time for M&A activity. With some hard work and the right people on both sides involved, there’s no reason why Companies who acquire other Companies won’t reap substantial benefits in terms of exponential growth and increased market share.