ingredients of a successful m&a

as i leave my company and reflect about what the company went through over the past months, a few key themes were clear. these reinforced the lessons i have learned over time. i summarise them as follows:

• leadership is important, and this is even more so in a merger and acquisition situation. my ceo had refused to discuss nor talk about vision or core values. this, in my opinion, formed the biggest single hurdle in the integration process. without a clear vision, teams from the two company that come together, cannot move forward as one. and as a result, whatever energies people have, ended up directed at each other in a negative way. the we vs them mentality became the order of the day.

• when the above happened, leaders down the line, the minus-1 and minus-2 levels begin to take sides, and began to fight with one another. information do not get shared, people downstream, begin to get this differential treatment, real or perceived perhaps is not the point, but the end is the same, teams end up not working in tandem or team members began to fight and worst still, rebel.

• associated with direction, there is also a need to clearly articulate what right behaviour is expected. in another words, values must be articulated. in my merged entity, none was done. in fact, the ceo insisted that the merged entity was ok (i think he was in denial) and insisted that the values of the two previous companies were similar and continued to keep them separate. this, while technically is correct, send the message to the company that the merger was "superficial" and that technically, the company was still very much 2 former entities that was merely placed together.

• communications must be consistent and clear. it is a critical component of engagement and must be cascaded clearly down the chain clearly and with a consistent message. absence of this will lead to chaos and in-fighting. one side will try to bully the other side... too much to talk about in this area...

• respect and sensitivity is of utmost importance. companies are made of people, and people have feelings and needs to be respected. management should not take sides, and should not use sentences that allow lots of room for people downstream to interpret. 

ok, just too many things to write here... but too lazy... haha... but yup, you get the drift. leadership, direction, values, communications, engagement, respect... all critical ingredients of a successful m&a. sadly, there was none in my company. it seemed like the ceo was just doing all these to complete his kpi and getting himself ready to be posted back to the parent company. and with this, the head of hr played so much politics and created so much divide amongst the minus-1 level that the whole environment became so toxic people are leaving in droves...