Mergers & Acquisitions
Problem Statement
Mergers and acquisitions often bring about uncertainty and resistance from teams who fear changes in culture or job loss.
Solution
Provide leadership coaching to seamlessly blend diverse corporate cultures, align new teams under a common vision, and mitigate fears through effective communication strategies. We help leaders manage the integration process with empathy and strategic foresight, ensuring a smoother transition.
A Leadership Story
We need to merge two organizations & modernize IT?
The had CEO worked tirelessly with the Board of Directors and the executive team to successfully acquire an organization which would double their size, extend their reach into a neighboring state, and provide the opportunity to modernize their operations. One of the biggest challenges was how to modernize IT while trying to merge the two organizations.
Following Intelligence Catalyst’s Discover, Design, and Engage (3-step) approach, the initial step was to Discover with the CEO, executive team, and talent throughout the organization to discover the opportunities, challenges, risks, and options to merge the two organizations while at the same time. The goal was to identify what is working, what is not working, gather ideas, to learn and absorb as much as we can. With the data, information, and knowledge documented, we worked with various leaders, key resources, and stakeholders to design the path forward. During the design sessions, insight and wisdom were used to help interpret and shape the plan and priorities.
Once the merger and modernization plan was completed, announcements were made, a kickoff occurred and it was time to engage at all levels of the organization. Throughout the weeks and months ahead, the focus was on prioritizing the changes needed at that moment of time to bring the organization and its customers closer together and aligned as the organization rallied around the vision of flowing of value to the customer. Starting with the smallest teams, services, and products, the lessons learned on how to evolve to become more product oriented were more quickly realized with minimal risks or impact of change. The customer realized that by leading their evolution, following Intelligence Catalyst’s guidance, that they could control the ebb and flow, the velocity and rate of the merger. This was different and new for the organization. In past mergers, the merger would take on a life of its own and the leaders felt like they were at the mercy of the changes… that the merger was controlling them.
Prior to the merger, there was an assessment of the IT abilities in each company which indicated a strong requirement to modernize. The approach would be to take the elements of IT which were working, shape them to best support the flowing of value to the customer, and build out any gaps. Intelligence Catalyst’s real-time experiential approach, provided the leaders and managers of the merger and modernization effort the capability to understand, prioritize and receive what they needed, where, and when they needed it to transform, evolve, and nuture. This approach resulted in increased transparency of why things needed to evolve, minimized disruption, retention of talent, and a modernized IT capabilities flowing value to the customers.
One aspect of the merger / modernization effort was to evovle the organization’s culture and mindset to now include Continouse Improvement (CI). As a result, the merger / modernization plan was now viewed as the first iteration of many to come. The organization is now continously learning as it continously monitors and reviews its ablity to flow value to its customer.
Intelligence Catalyst understands mergers and acqusitions are complex… that retaining and applying talent and intellectual property, or what is commonly refered to as the crown jewels, are key to success. This is why Intelligence Catalyst believes our immersive real-time experiential approach can help you succeed. We hope we have the opportunity to help and look forward to helping you with your merger and acquisition needs.