For many organizations engaged in acquisitions, capturing the full potential of deal value can be challenging. Deal success is about both identifying and achieving the cost synergies − on or ahead of time − and creating and realizing synergies associated with increased revenues, leveraging capabilities, cross-selling products and services, and uniting teams in new ways to focus on the customer. Both integration speed and the realization of these revenue synergies rely heavily on how well the two organizations understand each other’s working styles, where the similarities and differences are, where the opportunities and risks are, and where actions need to be taken and tracked to align respective “ways of working” with what is required for future business success.

Mercer recently conducted in-depth interviews with a select group of global organizations that are proactively addressing culture in their transactions. The aim of the research was to understand what drove these companies to address culture so proactively; what approaches, practices and methodologies they were using; what they regarded as their key learnings; and what advice they would offer to other organizations.

What we found was that, across organizations, there were four core elements in their approach that were highly consistent and were reinforced in example after example.

1. Discover and define direction − They each spent time with senior-most leaders very early on in the deal to discover and define the cultural characteristics that would be needed to deliver on the transaction and business strategy. And they each made time for the leadership team to come together to debate and articulate the behavioral patterns that would be needed, cascading these from the top.

2. Dig deeper − They each took the time to understand their own ways of working and those of others and to look for alignments and similarities as well as differences, risks and potential derailers of success from a variety of perspectives.

3. Determine levers and deploy − While each organization had its own approach − shaped very much by the nature of the transaction, where value lay, existing organization culture and leaders’ characteristics − a common characteristic among all was that they identified and prioritized a series of levers they determined were necessary to reinforce those specific behavior patterns, doing so in a very targeted and deliberate way.

4. Determine traction − The fourth element related to how each organization would track progress and monitor the success of its cultural-alignment efforts over time. Many realized that it was not sufficient to wait until results were in; rather, they recognized the importance of tracking (and retracking) a variety of lead indicators that typically provide early indications of progress and shortfalls.

To learn more, contact Mercer’s Global Culture Integration Leader, David E. King at d...@mercer.com or visit www.mercer.com/mergers-acquisitions