How to stop strong leaders ruining your merger

Mergers and acquisitions are still a key strategy for growth for many businesses.

Mergers are often the result of one organisation’s leaders recognising strong leaders in another organisation and wanting to benefit from their skills and experience. However two or more strong leaders coming together to run a corporation can often result in potentially conflicting views about how the new business should be run.

So how can you make the most of strong leaders in a merger situation?

My first piece of advice is to have a clear vision for the new organisation and to communicate that vision to your leadership teams. For leaders to be effective they need to know what their goals are. Then they can plan for these goals and lead their teams toward them.

Secondly, ensure that there are clear incentives in place for your leaders. It is an unfortunate fact that mergers often result in employees leaving a company. One way to ensure the best people stay is to incentivise them. It is also important that the incentives are clear, in line with the vision of the organisation and tailored to the individual leader. However it is essential to align all leader’s incentives so they drive collaboration between leaders.

Thirdly, ensure that you emphasise that the vision for the company is a ‘win for all’ situation. All the organisations involved in the merger and all the leaders will benefit from the merger, not just one company. To be successful the merger has to be a real combining of the organisations. You will need your leaders to pull together in order to achieve the optimum result.

Finally it is important to have effective retention and succession planning. Ultimately it is likely that some staff will leave and it is essential that you have a plan to replace those that do with others who can achieve the same levels of success. The good news is that retention rates can be significantly increased with the right strategies for each individual.

As always if any of the issues I have discussed here strike a cord in your organisation, or with your future plans, please get in touch to see how we can help.

Leading your teams through significant change

In 2015 global merger and acquisition activity reached an all time high, exceeding the previous high set in 2007. Factors such as cheap debt financing and pressure to improve efficiencies in a slow economy have meant that 2016 is shaping up to be another record year in M&A.

With more companies consolidating you may find that significant change is coming to your organisation. Any change can affect the performance of teams, but significant change, such as a merger or buy out, can be an even more difficult period to lead your team through effectively. So what can you do to help your team achieve in a period of change?

Understand your team members as individuals

How well do you really know your team? It is essential in a period of change that you understand the subtleties of each individual. What are their skills? What motivates them? Do not assume just because people have the same or similar roles that they are the same.

For example, some people embrace change and will be seeing the opportunities to influence it. However others prefer stability, so are likely to be worrying and asking questions about what the changes mean. Your job as a leader is (still) to get the best out of everyone, including establishing how the different types can work together effectively.

Help your team members to understand each other

Once you’ve taken the time to understand what drives and motivates your team it is important that all the team members understand each other. If the team’s top motivators are well aligned you can manage that motivation (and hence performance) at team level. If the motivators are more diverse, you will need to work more at an individual level, which is likely to take more effort and energy.

By engaging the team in this process everyone can help by understanding how to get the best from each other. This will add an extra dimension to your team working, accelerating the success of change management.

Identify individuals who may be ready for a role change

You may find that some of your team members are ready for a change. This may be a change of role within the team, or it may be a move to another team or role. It is important to get these role changes right and ensure that people are happy with the role changes suggested and do not feel that they are being moved as a result of the change in the organisation.

Put the emphasis on communication

Be clear about what you expect from the team and each individual. Help them to define what success looks like, alongside clear objectives and measures. This will not only help your team communicate with each other and work better together, but will also improve their ability to work with other teams, especially those from an organisation you merge with or are acquired by.

If you are not sure how to get started understanding the individuals in your team, get in touch and I’ll talk you through how we can help.