When bringing two businesses together, it’s crucial that you have the right team of individuals in order to make the integration a success. Selecting people with the appropriate level of influence is a challenge: they must be capable of making important strategic decisions independently, but not so integral to business-as-usual work that operations begin to crumble during the integration period.
An integration team is typically made up of 3 constituent groups: project managers specifically dedicated to leading integration efforts, workstream leaders with a functional/departmental focus, and a leadership steering committee. Each of these groups has an important role to play, and they must be able to work together seamlessly to ensure successful amalgamation.
Involving people at the right time is crucial. The due diligence phase is important for getting under the skin of the Target company and understanding its operating model. Loop in your key integration players — the project managers and select members of the steering committee — at this stage, so that everyone is up to speed and information isn’t lost along the way. You may also decide to pull specific workstream leads into DD, but we recommend keeping this group as streamlined as possible before the deal is fully established so as not to disrupt BAU activity.
As we mention in previous blog posts (see The role of the CEO in M&A Integration), the steering committee of executives must be able to provide direction and guidance to your integration project managers without getting too deep into the weeds. Contrastingly, your integration PMs must be able to effortlessly switch between providing high-level overviews for the C-Suite, as well as diving into detailed analysis with workstream leads.
Workstream leads must be subject-matter experts. Nominate both a strategic and an operational owner for each workstream: the former is responsible for making critical decisions, whereas the latter is responsible for actioning the plan. By splitting this into two distinct roles, the programme is more likely to stick to timelines, as delays are often due to lack of decision-making authority, or lack of capacity to execute implementation.
Finally, don’t forget to assign owners from the Target side. Many acquirers make the mistake of neglecting their newly bought company, thinking they can make all decisions independently. Senior leaders from within the Target company will know their own business better — not only in terms of its operations, but also its people — and therefore it is imperative that the Target side is able to offer advice around what is likely to work effectively, and which areas of your integration plan may need rethinking.
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