I had a bad experience with a lack of sponsorship. I was the CM with a team for the merger of 2 large companies from different parts of the US. There were huge differences in culture and teams started having clashes almost from Day 1. The problem was that there were 2 persons competing for 1 position at every level of management. No one would take the lead to help set an example, provide guidance or contribute to morale.
The teams at the lowest management levels, many of which were experiencing similar competition for final positions, were essentially leaderless. It was a stressful time until some form of final organization started to take shape. Rather than a merger with selectees from each company it was a brutal lay off for the most part for one of the companies as the merger morphed into an acquisition. The actual work of "merging" ended up taking significantly longer than planned although it improved once they figured out where this was going. The lack of guidance or information was horrible, and the CM team was intentionally left in the dark along with everyone else. We planned and started training which tuned out to be useless. Frustration increased over time.
I learned to ask many more questions before accepting these commissions. I had only been able to meet with and plan with one side before the merger was announced and that turned out to be the "losing" side. Even so, my team remained in place until the end.
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Frank Gorman, Former ACMP Board Member, Transformation Consultant
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Original Message:
Sent: 2025-10-06 08:28
From: Tanya D. Cane
Subject: A practical guide to building a unified culture after M&A:
Hello Marilyn,
Thank you for emphasizing that culture is the most critical factor in the success or failure of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). I completely agree that aligning values and ways of working is often the toughest but most vital part of integration, posing a greater risk or opportunity than systems and processes. Your four-step guide for building a unified culture-especially co-creating it with employees-is an excellent framework for managing the inevitable culture-based resistance. You're absolutely right that the key is recognizing that culture is everyone's responsibility and must be actively managed and reinforced throughout the process.
The Critical Role of Sponsorship and OCM in Cultural Alignment
To answer your question about how I've seen culture shape M&A outcomes, I'd highlight the extreme difficulty of cultural alignment without a Senior Sponsor and a robust Organizational Change Management (OCM) strategy.
Without executive-level sponsorship, cultural efforts often lack the necessary authority and visibility to succeed. A sponsor acts as the chief storyteller and enforcer of the new, unified culture, modeling the desired behaviors and quickly resolving inter-group conflicts that inevitably arise. Without this visible commitment from the top, employees perceive the cultural initiative as an optional "HR exercise," leading to cynicism, resistance, and a swift retreat back to familiar, legacy behaviors.
Furthermore, trying to align two complex organizational cultures without a strong OCM strategy is like navigating a ship without a map or a compass. OCM provides the structured framework, tools, and communication plans necessary to move people from their current state to the desired future state. It enables essential activities, such as:
Systematically assessing the cultural gaps.
Designing targeted training and communications that address specific employee concerns.
Establishing feedback loops to monitor resistance and course-correct in real-time.
Lacking OCM, the transition becomes chaotic: communication is inconsistent, employees feel excluded, and the merger premium is quickly eroded by a sharp drop in productivity and the loss of key talent from both sides. When culture isn't proactively managed through a deliberate OCM lens, it simply becomes a source of risk rather than an accelerator of success.
I look forward to discussing how others have seen culture shape M&A outcomes in practice.
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Tanya D. Cane
Original Message:
Sent: 2025-10-03 00:45
From: Marilyn Wamalwa
Subject: A practical guide to building a unified culture after M&A:
Most mergers don't stumble on the numbers-they stumble on the culture. Aligning values and ways of working isn't "soft work," it's the hardest-and most critical-part of integration
What makes or breaks most mergers and acquisitions?
It's not the systems.
It's not the processes.
It's the culture.
Bringing two organizations together means uniting people, values, and ways of working. Done right, culture becomes the greatest accelerator of success. Done poorly, it's the biggest risk.
A practical guide to building a unified culture after M&A:
✅ Assess and respect both legacy cultures.
✅ Co-create the future culture with employees at every level.
✅ Align cultural behaviors with strategic goals.
✅ Embed values into leadership, recognition, and daily decisions.
✅ Reinforce and measure progress over time.
One important key to remember is that : Culture is everyone's responsibility
How have you seen culture shape the outcome of a merger?
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Marilyn Wamalwa
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