Importance of Coaching in Mergers and Acquisitions

Posted on April 10, 2022 by Amit Mehra, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

Many a times, finding out the Areas of Improvement for a Coaching intervention is a critical task and if not done correctly, the entire assignment can go horribly wrong. This is an age of acquisitions and mergers and brings with it a set of “Winners” and “Losers”.

A friend, who was the CEO of a Startup, had taken over another smaller company that was in a similar industry. All was hunky-dory till he realized that there was something amiss and he was not getting the desired synergy in the market. He conducted an informal survey with a common pool of customers.

He realized that the business team from the acquired company was vastly different in terms of delivering sales. Though successful, they were the typical back-slapping guys and a high degree of informality with their customers. They were liked by their customers but lacking in some aspects and they were not so well respected.

On the other hand, even his original team was successful and well respected by their customers and worked with a high degree of formality. However, they were lower on the “likeness” quotient as compared to their peers from the acquired team.

The coaching intervention worked out very well and eventually there was a common “culture” and the company started showing the benefits of the merger in terms of incremental sales numbers.

Having been on both sides in my career, acquirer and acquiree, I can vouch that people integration is imperative and should be addressed on a war footing to ensure that the merger is value-accretive. More often than not, the tone at the top is “My Way or the Highway” and leads to sub-optimal results or failures.

One of the ways to draw synergies is to have Coaching Conversations with the teams and build their trust in the integration process…True for Start ups and Large companies as well…

PS: Previously posted on Linkedin