This blog was inspired by a LinkenIn posting.
I’ve worked on four successive credit union mergers and each time we developed looser success criteria. The reason we did this is integration and success on mergers is complicated and we found the tighter we tried to control it, the less successful we became.
At the beginning of the project, you may not know enough about the technical integration details to develop success criteria. I’ve found it much more useful to start with guiding principles and develop success criteria as knowledge grows.
The integration of the people is somewhat easier to plan – harder to achieve success. The key parts are communication, training, communication, training and transparency – oh, and communication.
Trying to achieve smooth people transition is a false goal. If you acknowledge that there will be challenges and hard times, it builds perspective. The difficult times will be difficult, but no one is measuring them against false promises of easy transition.
Guiding principles can be as simple as – minimize customer disruption, maximize employee involvement, transparent communication.
What this means is that you begin to set success criteria when you know enough to set realistic ones.
As and example, our transition date for the banking platform data was a key criteria.
By setting the date based on executive wishes,
- we had to make changes to the date,
- we had to reschedule training,
- we had to re-communicate information to staff and members and
- we had to work the team long hard hours.
By setting the date based on analysis of the banking platform, we were able to
- pick a date we could stick to
- initiate structured training and change management
- clearly communicate the progress, and upcoming milestones
- clearly communicate to the membership what was happening
- identify innovative approaches to meet the guiding principles
- let the people who were leaving know the date they could go on to their new journeys
Does anyone else have tips for project managers on mergers and acquisitions?
