While I was in Sydney earlier this month I had the great pleasure to meet with Constance Dierickx. Constance runs CD Consulting in the US and is a member of the Alan Weiss community, so I was looking forward to meeting her in person.
Constance is known for her expertise in helping organisations with high-stake issues such as mergers and acquisitions and crisis management. This gave us lots to talk about. She helps organisations when they are struggling to bring two organisations with very different cultures and ways of doing things together. Whilst we address similar issues we come from an execution perspective in aligning systems, process, people and information to strategy.
It was interesting that our discussion led us to agree that the issues faced during mergers and acquisitions are common regardless of geographic location. There are the legal and compliance issues such as business structures and models; leadership and management; how business differentiators can be protected and enhanced and how key business enablers (technology, process, people and information) can be used to deliver the performance required. Whilst in the acquisition and merger mode there is a great deal of effort and focus put onto the actual combined business end state, one of the biggest issues or problem areas is people capability and transition the associated management.
We could have talked on this for hours. Maybe this is material for new blog and video content?
Until next time.
