Adaptive acquisition strategy

Most of us have been on one side or the other. The acquirer or the acquired. We may find out about it when it is all but complete, or be part of the team putting it together.

Business benefit is front of mind for the acquirer. This is about acceleration of strategy, either to source skilful people immediately, expand markets quickly, or diversify offerings sooner than would be possible doing so in-house.

For the acquired, it is often about turning all of that effort put into creating something of value into something liquid. A reward for years of hard work.

Of course there is usually a delay for both parties in receiving what they were seeking from the transaction. An earn-out period for the seller, incentivising them to maintain business performance until they receive the full sale price. And for the buyer, the expected benefits to the bottom line usually take a number of years to materialise.

Their shared desire is that the integration of the organisations is a success to provide them with the best opportunity to achieve their desired outcomes.

Merger integration strategies must be adaptive rather than prescriptive. By changing the connections people have with each other, and changing their context, we bring about sustainable organisational change. From this beneficial patterns emerge.

Ritual Dissent and Insight & Alignment conversations are some of the ways different groups can start to hear each other and sense how to encourage more of what is helpful, and less of what isn’t.

Even more simply than getting people from both groups together for this type of conversation is a reflective exercise by one of more people overseeing the transaction. Here are some questions that can be helpful for this type of exercise:

1 - What do you want out of this merger?

2 - Why are you doing it?

3 - What are you afraid of?

4 - What are you excited about?

5 - What are the greatest unknowns?

6 - What can you offer?

7 - What can they offer you?

8 - Do you feel comfortable hearing and sharing these things?

9 - What ideas do you have for moving things towards the good outcomes?

10 - How can you continually adapt to what is changing around you?

11 - Do you think everyone can commit to a direction, even if there is some disagreement?

12 - What would it take to build trust?

13 - What would help in your environment to move towards the goals you have?

14 - How could the relationships change to move closer to your goals?

15 - What does success look like in 12 months?

16 - What are the shareholders expecting?

17 - Are there DNA elements that need to change, or be learnt?

18 - How might you go about doing this?

19 - What stories might capture key cultural traits?

20 - What safe-to-fail experiments could you run?