Making Mergers Work

Mergers fail also when financial experts do the thinking job, leaving the operational experts out of the exercise. I have seen the impact of plans on paper to close manufacturing sites in the pharmaceutical industry that made financially sense but ignored the fact that one can not move productions just from one site to another in this type of industry because of the required authorization for production, which may take 1-2 years to obtain. How awfull to hear ten years later that exactly the same error was made a decade later. Again because of the financial experts keeping the operational ones out of the planning.

I agree with MARIJKE...I have seen too often the mistake of business development and finance working solely with top leadership for months on end while failing to incorporate human resources or credible people influencers in the due diligence and final decision making process -- on BOTH sides of the deal. Too often the deal is decided and thrown over the fence to the functional leadership after the intent is cemented for them to "make it happen". That is where the trust, the communications, the collaboration and the partnership begins to erode first. Involve those who will influence the most people, educate them of the vision and keep them close for success! Trust to create trust! And as for HR, a good motto is to partner with HR early and often to truly engage both sides of the deal for faster synergies and to create a true "new company" culture of success! It is hard work, takes time, but is well worth all of the effort required, as indicated, for relationship building.