Category: M&A

Every acquisition seems to end in a familiar way. The major milestones have been completed, the critical systems are working well enough to support the business, and the integration team is finally able to take a breath. After months of navigating difficult decisions, competing priorities, and the inevitable surprises that accompany every acquisition, there is a sense that the hardest part is finally over. It is usually at that point that someone suggests holding a lessons learned meeting before everyone disappears back into their day jobs. I have attended many of those meetings over the years, and they are almost […]

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A few days ago, I returned to my old high school to speak at the retirement celebration of one of my teachers. I had not walked those halls in thirty years. As soon as I stepped through the front doors, I felt something I was not expecting. It was as though time had folded in on itself. For a moment I was no longer a consultant, a doctoral candidate, a wife, or a mother. I was as early teen again, trying to figure out where I fit in the world. The school looked almost exactly as I remembered it. The […]

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One of the strangest things about acquisitions is how much time we spend evaluating the company we are buying and how little time we spend evaluating ourselves. I have sat through diligence processes where teams reviewed financial statements, technology platforms, customer concentration, contracts, operating processes, management capability, and enough spreadsheets to make even the most committed Excel person consider a career in pottery. Every risk is catalogued, discussed, scored, challenged, and placed neatly into some colour-coded document that gives everyone a brief sense of control. Then the deal closes, and suddenly the organization that spent months examining someone else’s weaknesses […]

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Do you know what’s interesting? In M&A the deal team and the integration team are often running toward completely different definitions of success. None of these groups are smarter than the other, and not because they are intentionally creating problems, but because they are sitting inside completely different realities. The deal team is trying to get the transaction across the finish line. The integration team is trying to figure out whether the organization can actually absorb what is being purchased without creating operational chaos six months later. Both sides are intelligent. both sides are protecting value in their own way. […]

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One of the things that has always fascinated me about integrations is how quickly very sophisticated organizations can suddenly start behaving like a stressed family trying to assemble IKEA furniture without instructions. Everybody is present and has opinions, but nobody wants to admit they are confused, and at least one person is quietly questioning every life decision that brought them into the meeting. At the beginning, integrations usually feel incredibly organized. The organization moves with the confidence of something that still believes planning and execution are basically the same activity. Leadership feels aligned, and the deal rationale still sounds compelling. […]

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My eight-year-old son found a chicken outside and brought her home. Not from a farm, not from a neighbour we knew, not from any situation where a chicken should reasonably be collected and relocated by a child. She was just outside, wandering with confidence, and apparently that was enough to begin the acquisition process. By the time I understood what was happening, the chicken had a name. Ginger. Water had been offered. Food was being discussed. My son had already moved from discovery to emotional ownership in about seven minutes, which, frankly, is faster than most deal teams move from […]

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Everyone talks about technical debt, but almost no one talks about integration debt. Which is interesting, because if you have been through a few deals, you have definitely paid for it. Just not when you expected to. Integration debt is what you carry into Day 1 because you did not resolve it before close. It shows up as unvalidated assumptions, dependencies that were “understood” but never fully mapped, technology decisions that got pushed, and people risks that felt just uncomfortable enough to avoid. None of it feels critical in the moment. The deal is moving, the model holds, and nobody […]

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I’ve been living in two worlds lately. The first is research. Clean, structured, logical. It tells me exactly what organizations should be doing in integration. The second is operators. People who’ve done 30, 50, 150+ deals. Here’s the interesting part: They agree. Start integration early they say, align leadership, build the playbooks and don’t forget to capture lessons learned. Make sure to treat integration like a capability. So naturally, you’d expect consistent success, but no. Most integrations still underdeliver. Not dramatically, just quietly. Missed synergies, slow execution, talent walking out the door. So, what’s going on? We start too late… […]

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I’ve been living in two worlds lately. The first is research. Clean, structured, logical. It tells me exactly what organizations should be doing in integration. The second is operators. People who’ve done 30, 50, 150+ deals. Here’s the interesting part: They agree. Start integration early they say, align leadership, build the playbooks and don’t forget to capture lessons learned. Make sure to treat integration like a capability. So naturally, you’d expect consistent success, but no. Most integrations still underdeliver. Not dramatically, just quietly. Missed synergies, slow execution, talent walking out the door. So, what’s going on? We start too late… […]

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