The most important first step the leadership team needs to take to ensure successful PMI effort is to set the north star and chart the course for the journey. This includes formulating and communicating the vision and strategic rationale for the M&A transaction and the ensuing functional integration. It also includes spelling out the principles that should be adhered to throughout the execution of the post-merger integration (PMI) process and the success factors and metrics by which the effort will be measured.
“The top-down mandate from the C-suite has to be clearly understood and fully embraced by everyone in the organization”
Without a strong top-down mandate and expectations for timely and disciplined execution, PMI efforts can devolve into drawn-out, exhausting projects, whereby the key internal players whose involvement is required to complete the successful integration are left to their own devices, rudderless or overwhelmed with both day-to-day responsibilities and PMI tasks.
Senior management plays a critical role in this step, as they must clearly spell out and uphold the vision, principles, and success factors for the PMI effort. The top-down mandate from the C-suite has to be clearly understood and fully embraced by everyone in the organization.
In addition to defining the north star and enforcing the mandate, in this first step, top leaders must also establish the project management and execution structure the PMI will rely on. Different departments and managers have varying levels of comfort or experience with project management and PMI efforts. Therefore, without a centralized structure and consistent project management tools, functional teams will deliver widely different results, and the PMI effort would progress unevenly or stall altogether.
To avoid this risk, leadership must institute all the requisite project management office (PMO) elements that any major transformation would require, including the integration workstreams and team leads, the process and project management checklists, project plans, issue logs, meetings cadence, and tracking and reporting dashboards. Utilizing a professional project management and collaboration platform, such as Monday.com or Smartsheet, to deliver these PMO tools and artifacts consistently across all functions and workstreams is key to successfully executing a high-quality PMI process. Finally, a senior management should put in place a comprehensive internal (and if necessary, external) communication plan to ensure quality change management and mitigate risks to company culture and employee morale.
This is arguably the most crucial step in the 6-Step PMI framework, yet it is commonly overlooked or underestimated by management. Often senior leaders are eager to “get on with it” and jump into the execution of the PMI activities in order to complete the transformation as quickly as possible, and not spend the requisite time and effort to spell out the integration principles and success factors for the PMI effort.
Interested in learning more? Find the next article in this series, “Organizational Structure in a Post-Merger Integration” here.
Back to all insights
