Eclectic Change

Sustainability through a “North Star” Goal

Finally, someone has captured the full scope of the sustainability issue and resolved some of the inner conflict I have been experiencing lately.  Protecting the natural environment isn’t the whole story: companies must consider their social, economic, and cultural impact as well.  Sustainability is good business and therefore corporate social responsibility makes good sense to businesses and all of us. Intuitively I knew this but try to explain the logic in a ROI sense and it sometimes takes a ...

The Integration Imperative for Merger Success

I took the title of this post from a recent article in Industry Week Manufacturing: Manufacturing Merger Success: The Sales Force Integration Imperative subtitled: "A powerful driver underlying B2B M&A outcomes is the degree to which sales forces are successfully integrated."  This is a very good article by Michael B. Moorman.  While he focuses his attention on the Sales Force, the integration risks that frequently undermine the degree of merger success as identified by a study from his firm...

White Paper – Post Merger Integration

It has been a little difficult for our readers sometimes to order and download our first White Paper on Post Merger Integration so we have loaded up here for our readers. Leading Cross-Cultural Re-Engagement Final

In light of today’s difficult economic times, a Christmas-Chanukah merger

This came across my desk today and with good humor, I had to share it with you. The full post at Maggie's Farm is by guest poster Bruce Kesler is Oy, Come All Ye Faithful: First Night of Hannukah (with Christmakah)   Maggie's Farm describes itself as "a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics". Continuing the current trend of large-scale mergers a...

Boldness in Business – Great Title for Business Awards

The Financial Times/ArcelorMittal Boldness in Business Awards will take place at the Tate Modern gallery, London, on March 19 2009. The categories, which will be nominated by a panel of judges, are: Drivers for Change; Corporate Responsibility; Environment; Emerging Markets; Entrepeneurship and Lifetime Achievement.  A couple of things caught my eye besides the title which in of itself is quite catchy.  The definition of the first category is particularly interesting: Drivers of Change Bold dri...

What is a merger versus a consolidation?

Here is a short, 3.5 minute video which explains a couple of key concepts involved in mergers and acquisitions. It is a good reminder that while we at 1-Focus point out that our primary work is in the area of mergers and acquisitions, the people that really hire us are more interested in consolidation. Hence the importance for them of integration. I know . . . "a rose by any other name . . .    

Social Media does not make a community make

This is the second time this week that the idea of using social software in M&A’s has crossed my desk. First, was a social networking tool which was used a couple years ago to aid in the merger between Adobe & Macromedia.  I took the testdrive and found it interesting. You can find it at this link:http://www.intronetworks.com/testdrive.html The second is a rather interesting post "How Can Social Software Help Mergers And Acquisitions?"  Blogger Laurisa is a IBM Social Software Specialis...

Are we really beginning to see other factors than financials at play in M&A’s?

My thanks to for sharing this information from Terrill Frantz who points out as he puts it - A nice 5-minute interview video of the managing director of M&A integration for Getzler Henrich & Associates LLC. Some points Dino Mauricio makes:  1) Cost savings may not be there  2) Importance of softer side of integration  3) Need a 100 day plan  4) Expect some short term results early on for shareholders  It takes a couple of minutes to get to the meat. The customer experience (maintaining...

Mergers and Culture Clash

Last month, The Financial Times UK had a short article called: Can the new CEO end a culture clash after a merger?  To begin there was no analysis of any cultural / DNA due diligence which would lead to the proper culture strategy but that is a discussion for another time and to be fair beyond the scope of this piece. What was particularly interesting and enlightening was the take from four perspecitves: The Academic: Maintaining the illusion that there were no losers in the merger merely sust...

Leadership, Judgment and Follow-Through

In their book, Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls  Tichy and Bennis identify the stages of the decision making process: sensing a need, getting it "framed and named," mobilizing others, making a judgment and seeing the execution through.   Good judgment doesn't just happen, says Noel Tichy, a business professor at the University of Michigan. "When we looked at leaders that make big decisions ... it's not a blink, it's a process," Tichy says. "You own it from beginning to end."   I c...