Topics › Defining and delivering strategy
Mergers and strategic partnerships
Two organizations are meant to act as one, or to work together for years. Before signing, attention goes to valuation, price and legal terms. After signing, the questions a contract can only partly settle come to the surface: how decisions are made in practice, how the value is shared, and whose way of working sets the standard.
What is at stake
The value that justified the deal or the partnership remains a promise until both sides deliver it together. It erodes fastest in the months after signing, when attention returns to day-to-day business and unresolved questions are settled by default, by whoever has more power, more patience or simply moves first. Key people and key customers watch closely how those first decisions are made.
What typically goes wrong
- The negotiation ends at signing, and the questions that decide whether the deal works are left for later.
- Integration is run as an organizational project, although much of it is a series of negotiations between people who gain and people who lose.
- Each side assumes its own processes and culture will set the standard.
- Formal governance is agreed, but nobody has discussed the decisions most likely to cause friction, or how deadlocks will be resolved.
- In partnerships, the original sponsors move on and the agreement loses its advocates.
What changes for you
- Decision rights and escalation paths that both sides have actually agreed to.
- A shared plan for resolving the conflicts most likely to arise.
- People on both sides who understand what they gain and are prepared to carry the agreement.
How we approach it
We look at the deal or the partnership from both sides: what each party expected, what it gave up and where interests diverge now. Then we work with the decision-makers on the questions that were left open, and prepare the negotiations that integration requires, internally and with the other party. Ideally we are involved before signing, while the terms that matter are still negotiable.
What we clarify first
- Which expectations from the deal phase have never been written down or agreed?
- Where do the interests of the two sides diverge now that the deal is signed?
- Who decides when the two sides disagree, and have both sides accepted that?
Tell us what’s at stake
Thirty minutes, no pitch. You describe the situation. We tell you honestly whether we can help, and how.