Leadership drives culture within organizations and supports the engagement of employees. Identifying, deploying, and equipping the right leadership for merger and acquisition (M&A) integration is essential to ensuring success. Does your leadership have the skills and training needed to navigate the challenges involved?

Merging people, personalities, and cultures is difficult. It is imperative that leaders have clear roles and can gel as a new team together. The immediate objective is to create a “we” culture instead of an “us and them” culture. Most of all, leaders need leadership training to ensure strategy, planning, communications, and integrations are successful. By doing so you will save time and money.

Merger Trends Aren’t Slowing Down Anytime Soon

Mergers continue at historic rates, and trained leaders are vital. In 2021, there were 24,412 M&A deals in the U.S., amounting to $212 billion. This number is up from 17,869 in the previous year according to Statista Research. Globally, M&A deals topped $5 trillion for the first time ever, comfortably eclipsing the previous record of $4.55 trillion set in 2007, Dealogic data showed. 

Common M&A Integration Problems

According to Pritchett LP, the key M&A problem areas for leadership are:

• Lack of pre-planning: This contributes to the failures more than half of the time.

• No formal M&A integration strategy: A clear overall integration strategy must be developed first.

• Failure to prioritize workstreams: Every workstream will be considered as important taking the focus away from actions that deliver the most value.

• Weak communication planning: Communication is usually the worst managed aspect of integrations. People are often left out of the loop or receive mixed messages.

• Poor synergy program management: Synergies should be validated, and then rigorously tracked and reported.

• Inadequate resourcing: This causes integrations to take longer, cost more, delay synergy realization, and burns people out

• No end-state transition: The process for handing off integration work should be well defined and communicated.

The Right Skills to Transition Smoothly

M&A integration leaders need the following skills according to Ernst & Young:

• Rapid problem‑solving: The ability to quickly prioritize is essential. Successful leaders solve problems as they arise and recognize and mitigate risks early to reduce bottlenecks.
• Ability to communicate effectively: The integration leader must clearly communicate goals and objectives to all stakeholders across all levels in the organization.
• Trust of top management, with the authority to make decisions: Integrations are conducted on tight timelines with little room for errors, requiring the integration leader to be trusted to make operational decisions and to know when strategic choices need to be reviewed more broadly.
• Ability to think strategically: Throughout the integration, the goals may change, or new goals may be identified so the integration leader must constantly review the integration plans and confirm that they still support the evolving deal model, assumptions, and goals of the organization.
• Ability to influence corporate opinion and key stakeholders: The most effective integration leaders are well respected and able to inspire teams that may have never collaborated to work toward a shared goal.
• Organizational knowledge and motivational skills: Because integrations can take months to years, it is imperative that an integration leader motivate the workstream leads throughout the duration to confirm that all goals are achieved.

We Can Help!

Anser Advisory’s Leadership Development Program LDPx™ is a proven 10-year system that takes top industry leadership models and breaks them down into tangible and applicable concepts. The curriculum covers a variety of topics around the three phases in the Leadership Development Training Arc™ — Leading Self (phase one), Leading Teams (phase two), and Leading Vision & Strategy (phase three). We practice the concepts we teach so they can be immediately applied and make an impact on your organization. Participants will be taught by our executive team, and other successful industry leaders, to enhance leadership skills, improve decision-making, build high-performing teams, and use strategies that propel organizations.

Enroll today to reserve your seat in the LDPx™ session that starts October 14th, 2022!

About Anser Advisory

Anser Advisory is an ENR Top 50 Program Management firm, and Great Place to Work® designated 2021 Best Workplaces in Consulting & Professional Services™, specializing in capital program advisory and consulting services, organization preparedness, strategy, funding, process development, program controls and project, program, and agency construction management. Anser Advisory offers clients solutions that address owner pain points across the capital development cycle from pre-planning through construction and closeout within a diverse range of social and civil infrastructure end markets.

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