Blended: A Leader's Guide to Managing Change During Post M&A Integrations

By Robin ML Johnson

Blended - A Leader's Guide to Managing Change During Post M&A Integrations is a playbook providing HR and Integration leaders, especially new to the integration space, a how to on managing the change that's needed to bring two companies together successfully. In this playbook you'll find tasks that sho

• Language: English
• Publisher: Envise
• Release date: Aug 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9780991508242

Robin ML Johnson

Robin is an experienced Organization Effectiveness leader with more than 15 years of experience in a variety of industries/environments, including: Pharmaceuticals, Food, Retail, Non-Profit, Printing and Wine & Spirits. Robin is a change agent, with a passion for helping organizational leaders move their organizations from current to future state. More specifically, Robin's work, through her firm, DesignOrg Solutions, is primarily focused on large-scale transformations such as, M&A Integration work and organizational restructures. Advising on large-scale transformations by assessing the impact of change on the organization, assessing the readiness of the organization to go through the change process, managing leadership/stakeholder engagement, redesigning organizational structures, preparing employees for ERP system implementations, and coaching leaders through the transformations are areas of expertise. Lastly, Robin has a Doctor of Strategic Leadership degree and published her first book, Leaders Don't Have To be Lonely: Eliminate the Loneliness and Lead Like A Coach, in 2014.

Book preview

BLENDED

A Leader’s Guide to Managing Change During Post M&A Integrations

Robin M. L. Johnson

© 2022 by Robin M. L. Johnson. All rights reserved.

For general information on our other products and services see the authors website at www.designorgsolns.com or call [phone].

Published by: DesignOrg Solutions, LLC, Lisle, Illinois

Blended: A Leader’s Guide to Managing Change During Post M&A Integrations

ISBN 978-0-991-50820-4-2

Blended: A Leader’s Guide to Managing Change During Post M&A Integrations

Introduction

The Blended Company

Parallels between failed blended families and blended companies

Section Two Integration Plans and Activities

Day One Communications

Discover

Defining Future State

Change Impact Assessment

Understanding Your Stakeholders

Measuring Project Readiness

Design

Create the Change Management Strategy

Socialize the Change Management Plan

Deliver

Right Leadership

Getting To Know One Another

Understanding Leadership Styles

Foster Collaboration over Competition (All Employee Activity)

Leading Newly Acquired Employees

Reinforce

Conclusion

About The Author

Introduction

W

hen the marrying of two companies mean blending policies and procedures, ways of working, decision-making, how people are paid, how leaders lead, how employees work together, and how and why employees are rewarded, how hard can it be? And what can possibly go wrong? Right? In one word…everything.

The research tells us that 70+ percent of unsuccessful integrations are, in large part, because of the aforementioned. It isn’t taken into consideration much, if at all. And I know this number seems excessively high, but when you consider that we are bringing two living organisms together, with their own personalities, and their own lives, is it any wonder that things might not go so well? When what makes the two companies who they are goes neglected in the blending process?

The failures are what we get when we perceive organizations as little more than charts and job descriptions, which is why these details are the most overlooked when a merger or acquisition discussion is being had. As you can see, there’s a lot to be mindful of to successfully blend two companies and make them one, if this is indeed the goal. For some of your integrations, remaining operationally decentralized from the parent company is part of the deal, in which case, seeing