Hi Anthony, sure.
We assess culture based on the Behaviors, Beliefs, and Decision-making of an organization, their ways of working. Culture is at the intersection of the three. When it comes to harmonization or integration, it's much more than allowing people to wear jeans to the office or have an air hockey table in the common area. Culture is the responsibility of all functions in integration, just as they were involved in the assessment during diligence. As those functions are addressing the integration of people, processes, and systems, they are also looking at the ways of working of the acquired organization and how to bring them in.
Here's an example - Employee and Manager Self-service is core to our HR operating model. Many times, when we bring in smaller firms, those employees are accustomed to stopping by the HR person's desk with whatever question or concern they have. Often, it's resolved that day or the next. It is a huge cultural change for them to move to our model. To ensure a successful transition, timing is always the first consideration: we wouldn't transition in the middle of a big renewal period, or in the middle of performance reviews. Commonly we'll also provide some white glove support for a period of time. Rather than a hard cutover, we'll have a dedicated person, in office, if possible, to sit with employees to walk them through the submission process and guide them through the systems if requested. This is after extensive communications and training. That white glove support individual can also help escalate and chase answers on exception basis for a period of time if we deem the group to need additional time to adjust to our standard SLAs.
Using the words cultural harmonization can be tricky. Ultimately not everyone may be interested in adopting the culture of their new organization. We know people and culture issues are a top reason deals fail. This is why we attempt to have our culture and change team members connected to each function, to support and advise.
This is definitely more of an art than a science, and I'd love to hear how others ensure success bringing two cultures together too. Anyone else have perspective to share?
Happy Holidays to all,
Becky
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Becky Persak
Aon
Head of M&A - Leadership, Culture & Change
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Original Message:
Sent: 2023-12-19 09:37
From: Anthony Casablanca
Subject: The Role The Change Management Team Plays During M&A Integration
Rebecca,
Thanks for taking time to contribute your experience to the discussion.
Without knowing the size of your organization, I would not be too quick to apologize for the lack of an OCM team. I a big proponent of strategy, principles and values should drive structure. All too often we think we have to follow the parade of what we see everyone else doing. Having a Chief Officer and a small kingdom does not equate to adding value.
I am curious if you could add a little color commentary about how the team works through the "cultural harmonization" you referenced. I think many M&A teams struggle with this component.
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Anthony Casablanca
Co-Founder and President
GriefLeaders LLC
"Changing How Change is Implemented"
www.griefleaders.com
]
Original Message:
Sent: 2023-12-18 11:28
From: Rebecca Mox-Persak
Subject: The Role The Change Management Team Plays During M&A Integration
Hi Anthony,
Let me share how we approach this at my organization, starting to say that we don't have a dedicated OCM office organization-wide. We're probably a bit unorthodox, and I wouldn't say this is a best practice, but here we are. I'm sharing as an example of making it work with what we have....
We have local project team members with varying levels of change management experience we engage. Most often it's the same individuals that have been on the project through all of diligence, which is the ideal state. The varying levels of experience usually require a lot of coaching and guidance, a lot of times via workshops. Our detailed integration (project) plans aren't confirmed until a few weeks after we close, so we allow for those to advance for timing and clarity before coming in with heavy change management discussions.
In answer to your second question, all of the above. The change management work is primarily accountable for driving a positive colleague experience through integration but we must meet the deal model financial objectives. The strategy execution and process and system integrations need to account for the cultural harmonization and how work gets done. Change management is critical to the success of all of those elements.
I don't know if this is the response you were aiming for, but again how we're doing it in my neck of the woods!
Becky
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Becky Persak
Aon
Head of M&A - Leadership, Culture & Change
Original Message:
Sent: 2023-10-26 08:35
From: Anthony Casablanca
Subject: The Role The Change Management Team Plays During M&A Integration
Hey M&A community.
I am grappling with a couple of philosophical questions and would love your input.
At what phase in the M&A process is the OCM team brought in and what role does the team play?
a) Strategic planning phase
b) Due diligence phase
c) Integration phase
The second question is, during the integration phase, what is the focus of the change management team?
a) Integrating the two company's strategies
b) Achieving financial targets
c) Process integration (IT, FIN, HR)
d) Cultural integration
I look forward to reading your answers and opinions on this topic.
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Anthony Casablanca
Co-Founder and President
GriefLeaders LLC
"Changing How Change is Implemented"
www.griefleaders.com
]
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