Is your organisation planning potential M&A (mergers & acquisition) activity as part of it’s strategic plan? Do you understand how you will combine any new leadership teams? Knowing skills, behaviour and experience is key, however understanding a persons impact and contribution will be critical for successful integration.
Bringing together any new leadership team can be problematic. Whether that’s the team leading the new organisation or teams within the business leading different functions its critical to get the team right. At InFocus HR we’ve gained global in mergers and acquisitions. As a result we’ve supported a wide range of discussions around appointing a new leadership team.
Assuming that you’ve completed all the initial stages of the Organisation Design correctly? Then you’ll need to focus on appointing the team into new or redefined roles. This is the stage that can often cause the most anxiety to your people. Unfortunately it’s often the stage one that we still get wrong, both in the short term (i.e. just making the wrong appointment) or in the longer term as you don’t achieve the measures of success you set out to deliver. Even with a robust assessment process this can still go wrong. So, why is that?
Lets look at the standard process most people will follow
Firstly, we tend to make these appointments (outside of a redundancy/at-risk process) on the basis of an interview. Used effectively they are a good way to assess a candidate’s expertise and ultimately their experience. Secondly we might use a behavioural assessment to assess personality – such as Hogan, MBTI etc. Assessments can provide useful insight into a person’s ability in areas such as influencing, reasoning, perception etc. So, why therefore do we still make the occasional wrong appointment or appoint a candidate that doesn’t deliver the expected results?
So what’s missing in your decision making?
What’s probably missing is impact i.e. where does a person get their energy from to do the job you need them to do? Understanding this will give you a sense of how they will make a contribution to both success in role but also the wider team.
So, for example, following the acquisition you need a new Director of Operations. The focus of this role is now on combining operational output, as well as improving processes (to generate cost savings) and bringing a focus on customer satisfaction (to drive retention) The two previous Head of Operations for your organisation and the acquired one are both great at improving processes. However, one candidate has a better record of implementing change, so are seen as a ‘safe pair of hands’. The other candidate has been able to design new solutions that deliver great customer service. So how do you make that final decision on who to appoint or do you go external for a completely different person?
That’s where The GC Index can provide an additional level of insight to your decision making. It helps you and the individuals understand where they get their energy and how they best make a contribution. So, using the example above you have one candidate who is probably an Implementor / Polisher. The other candidate is probably a Game Changer / Polisher. Based on the immediate priorities i.e. cost reduction or client retention you may chose to go with the first or second candidate or hire someone with a Game Change / Implementor profile?
We can help with your M&A leadership team assessment
To find out how InFocus HR and The GC Index can help you get the right people into your post acquisition leadership team have a look at our website or via our Powered By The GC Index partner site.