future culture for NewCo
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Dear colleagues, question to you/ us:
How and when would you initiate the process of defining the future culture for NewCo and the receiving organization, and how would you introduce this new culture? Which framework would you use to guide the effort?Good questions! I think the defining of the culture happens between the steps of the initial signing and day one, so that the culture can be in place once the new entity is operational. There are some great frameworks on what culture actually is and how to frame it, but my rule of thumb is that culture consists of three things: “what we see” (visible symbols), “how we act” (decisions and behaviors), “what we value” (deeply embedded ways of thinkings). You can define the most important cultural attributes of a company and ensure all three things are aligned.
Great topic. In my experience, NewCo culture works best when it’s intentionally designed rather than defaulting to the louder or larger legacy organization.
What often gets overlooked is that culture isn’t just values on a slide, it shows up in decision-making speed, risk tolerance, and how client work actually gets delivered. If those behaviours aren’t aligned early, teams revert to “us vs them” very quickly.
I’ve found the most effective approach is defining a few non-negotiable behaviours early on, then allowing flexibility elsewhere. That balance seems to support both integration and retention.
This is such an important topic and having an intentional process to create a new culture for the new organization is critical to success, especially when merging organizations that have well established cultures to begin with. One effective approach that I have seen is to build the culture from the bottom up, taking time to understand what your employees value about the organization. In a previous merger that I was part of, they really took time to dig in deep in focus groups, surveys, and informal conversations with employees at all levels, and leveraged the collective sentiment and language to create values that really resonated. Once values are established, finding ways to embed them into processes within the organization to bring them to life helps to ensure they aren’t just words on a page.
Dear all, thanks for your insights. I would initiate the definition of the future culture as early as the pre‑close integration planning, once leadership alignment is secured and the strategic intent of the merger is clear. Starting early avoids the vacuum in which employees create their own narratives. The process should run in parallel with structural and operational design, using cross‑functional workshops, listening sessions, and insights from existing culture surveys to ground the effort in reality rather than aspiration. A practical framework could be the “Competing Values Framework” in aligning leadership, behaviors, and decision‑making at pace.
Hello, here are some thoughts from me:
If, during due diligence, it is found that the current culture at NewCo would not support the strategy to achieve the new objectives and results, I would initiate the work to define the new culture directly after closing together with leaders from NewCo. I would use the Competing Values Framework (CVF) where it is also very clear that the starting point is to establish and agree on what the current culture looks like. Due Diligence is a good time to start that work through interviews and “go see” activities. It is also important to be clear on the acquiring company’s culture. CVF is only looking at the organizational culture change which I think is good as it makes the change more well defined, but if the national cultures are different it is also good to bring in some awareness of that as it will have impact on the change process such as what blockages will be difficult to deal with. What I like with the CVF framework is that it is not just analysis, but an easy to understand model for change. Having said that, cultural change is of course still very difficult and takes time if there is a big gap.Thank you very much for your support. I will continue researching CVF, but if you could privately share any documents or visuals, I would greatly appreciate it.
Hi Alex,
In my view, the cultural end state definition really starts at the M&A strategy stage and needs to have a tangible form into DD.
This highly depends on the deal intent, for example if the intention is to transform a business model and for a merger to be a catalyst for change, the cultural definition needs to start the the strategy setting. If the intention is to accelerate market access DD stage should be where you really start to understand the cultural fit and plan for the cultural end state.
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