Mergers & Acquisitions
Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) is a key growth strategy for many of the most successful organizations. M&As help organizations enter new markets, access new intellectual property, and pick up new talent. However, they also present significant risk such as employee turnover, power struggles, and wasted resources. In fact, up to 70% of all M&A deals fail to meet expected results.
Cultural incompatibility, or culture clash, is a dominant driver of these failures.
Our Solution
In any merger or acquisition, Denison minimizes the risk of “culture clash” by bringing culture to the forefront of the M&A process. From the due diligence to the integration phases, we help create a single, high-performing organization.
Before the deal is even signed, our Cultural Due Diligence solution can assess and model your target's culture. This insight will draw out the opportunities and risks associated with the deal, informing your negotiation and integration planning.
Once the ink is dry, our Cultural Integration solution will create a common language and framework for integrating multiple cultures into one.
Our approach will help you focus on the cultural areas and activities that impact business performance.
Cultural Due Diligence
Each target and deal is different – with different publicity and access to information. In a low information environment, Denison’s Advanced Analytics can discretely assess market intelligence, internal documentation, and targeted interviews. We use this data to build a predictive model of your target’s culture.
Our experts use this assessment to highlight the deal’s cultural risks, allowing your organization to proactively mitigate those risks through negotiation and planning.
Cultural Integration
Integration starts on day one. The deal has been signed and the real work of bringing the organizations together begins.
- DiscoveryThrough executive interviews, our Senior Consultants will clarify the level of integration anticipated or desired. They will also surface individual leader’s expectations regarding what should be preserved and changed in the emerging culture.
- PlanningYour Denison Team will work with you to define key milestones and objectives to ensure our partnership is strong and expectations are aligned.
- DiagnosisThe Denison Organizational Culture Survey (DOCS) will provide a roadmap for the culture integration process. What is the common vision for the future? What values will guide behavior? How do we balance internal integration with the external needs of the marketplace?As we examine your data, we will look for critical patterns that present opportunity and potential risk in an M&A context.
- Honest Conversation & Action PlanningWith your leadership and integration teams, our Senior Consultants will use facilitation tools to create the cultural awareness across both organizations.This awareness will allow your teams to identify cultural habits and routines that serve as the foundation of the current cultures. By understanding these underlying behaviors, Denison can help both groups “bridge the gap"– that is, plan for potential culture clash and focus the workforce on the creation of a single, high-performing organization.
- ImplementationLeaders and managers are critical to the success of cultural integration. Deciding which leaders will fill specific roles can be difficult, and developing all leaders with one set of competencies and capabilities will be crucial moving forward.Our Denison Leadership 360 provides leader-specific data for organizations to better assess the leadership capabilities of merging or acquired companies.
- Sustainable ImprovementAfter Year 1, the Denison Organizational Culture Survey (DOCS) will allow you to assess the degree of integration and plan for the future together.
