[Mery De Pra]

Many things can represent a challenge during integration and difficulties are part of the journey. I was wondering, with regards to change management, which are the signs that something is really going to lead to failure and at what point in time you acknowledge that so that you can intervene and change the path.

[Michiel Drijvers]

In my view change management is part of the integration plan. The integration plan has evaluated how much effort is required to get both organizations aligned and culturally integrated. It is not unusual that it will take years before people no longer speak about “us” and “them”.
What the point in time is to recognize the failure, is actually before the failure. If an integration fails, the distance between “us” and “them” is growing and people will not treat each other with respect. Changing that path needs to be done before the failure happened. I think it can not be repaired.
So the intervention needs to happen continuously by addressing unwanted behavior.

[Cristina Reyna Elorza]

When it comes to Integrations, everyone is expecting challenging times, but I find interesting to differentiate what can be attributed to failure into the Integration Planning and activities and what we could consider “normal” in any given project, although there are a lot of similarities, all systems should be taken in account when assessing, planning and executing M&A projects so we can have a good postmortem analysis.

[Jihad Saadeh]

It’s important to distinguish between normal integration challenges (the expected ones) and signals of failure in change management (the warning signs), timely recognition and quick corrective action are crucial before failure becomes inevitable.

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