Strategy Implementation and Integration Workshops
The primary results achieved within Strategy Implementation are to:
- Drive out the key products, services, and target markets for the ensuing two to three-year window
- Understand, agree on, and articulate the basic organizational beliefs
- Craft a formal Product Roadmap
- Plan for the successful implementation of the determined Strategy
- Drive out a communications plan to inform, encourage, and inspire all stakeholder areas.
Taking a close, critical look at the competition, your organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and what the perceived potential is for the future will do much to ensure your transition’s success.
The Process
We knew ‘it’ would be a no-brainer, but we honestly didn’t know what ‘it’ entailed. Once MergerCoach painted a vibrant picture of the entire integration process, we were genuinely terrified. Thankfully, MergerCoach’s process was well-suited to help our team meet each critical area of concern during our transition.
-Sue Thompson, Vice President, InFocus
The driver for all M&A deals is value. But “value” is one of those highly misunderstood words. What MergerCoach means by “value” is the sum total of an organization’s hard assets, manufacturing capacity, research & development capability, combined sales efforts, and people.
Only two of these areas serve as monumental contributors to overall deal success, or deal value: Sales and people. Often, executives head to the factory to count all their hard assets, or head to R&D to revamp their processes, all the time neglecting to engage and manage the folks who keep the business running: the people. The Process places heavy weight on these two areas for one reason only: that is where the value is either gained or lost.
The Process means engaging 100% of your population in the process of transitioning to the go-forward organization. This system calls for a temporary operating structure that includes a Executive Steering Committee, Integration Team, and functional Task Forces that remain in place for a 90-180-day period. These teams are tasked with tackling tough business issues and then making recommendations regarding sustainable improvements. The primary results achieved in the Process include providing a critical, functional analysis of the current and future operational systems; and reconfiguring of internal systems to support the integration strategy and business structure criteria.
Organizational Alignment—Capability Management System
When a head coach looses his starting quarterback, a gap is left that is extremely difficult to fill! He must act quickly in an attempt to relax anxious team members, fans and reporters. He might be inclined to sign a rookie QB from another team because time is of the essence. Games must be played and life must go on. However, a knee jerk reaction to fill such a weighty position could cost the team its future.
Can you relate? What is your process for replacing your own star talent? Is your executive team prone to letting politics override competency in re-filling choice positions in your organization?
The number one penalty we assess our clients is trying to put people in boxes before they understand how those boxes will play in the new organization. Dinner meetings are famous for instigating such insane promises. You’ve seen it before: CEO, against the advice of executive team peers, asks Senior VP of Sales to dinner during the midst of complete company reorganization. Before the crème brulee is served, the sales guy is now COO. Can the SVP be effective in the new role? It really doesn’t matter. The process is what’s at fault.
A successful transition management system will not consider who goes in the organization chart boxes until after the what and where of those boxes has been determined. The new organization must address questions like: will we operate by function, as a matrix, or some combination of the two? Will geographies be self-contained, or will they rely on some consolidated corporate unit? Once these (and other) decisions are made, leaders should then figure out how to populate the determined structure.
The MergerCoach Capability Management System (CMS) allows your executive team to evaluate employees’ current capabilities, based on time perspective, job role, skills, passion & attitude. After mapping necessary competencies of the new role, CMS facilitates the comparison of the two sets of results to give you a decisive gap analysis to make organizational design decisions.