M&A's New Top Priority: Cultural Integration

Company culture is the secret to 1+1 = 3 in today's complex M&A deals

As they race towards Day 1, today's deal makers focus on many things to get the transaction across the finish line. Top priorities are often linked to the immediate impact on operations and value creation: IT integration, TSA finalization, reporting redesign, and other operational to-dos. A tremendous amount of energy and muscle is poured into target selection, due diligence, deal structure, and more. But a sobering reality of M&A work is that many of the deals are destined to fail.

Even when every piece of the people, process, and technology agenda is seamlessly executed, that only gets you to closing and Day 1. There's a significant factor that often goes unaddressed—the marriage of the two cultures into one cohesive community with a common vision of the future. When company cultures collide, all the tactical work that went into Day 1 execution can be rendered meaningless. It doesn't have to