With mergers and acquisitions (M&A) occurring regularly, you’d think the fail rate would be lower than it is, but statistically speaking, 70% – 90% of all mergers fail. This happens for many reasons, but the one we’ll focus on today is the exclusion of a proper change manager. The inclusion of a dedicated and experienced change management consultancy can be the difference between an M&A being successful or unsuccessful.
During a change, company culture and employees – which are highly valued by the employers – can be left behind. During the change, it is really important to effectively integrate and manage the change process. This keeps people happy, maintains business as usual and gives organisations the competitive edge in the marketplace they currently reside in.
M&As are really exciting, but they are also really tense and stressful. You have the opportunity to diversify products and services, and a real chance to increase your capabilities as a business, and at the same time mergers can decrease productivity and significantly increase the business.
This is where a change management strategy can really help the team stay focused. This isn’t just about business as usual, it’s about getting your employees excited and encouraged to push through the change, which will reduce disturbances in the workplace.
So what exactly does a change management consultant do when it comes to an M&A?
Let’s find out!
What is a change management consultant?
A change management consultant is someone who is responsible for helping transform the way the organisation continues to operate whilst it undergoes a huge change. They’ll manage every stage of your merger to make sure there’s as little disruption as possible, and that all loose ends are tied up, to significantly improve the odds that your merger is successful.
The earlier you can get a change manager involved in your merger, the better.
What does a change management consultant do?
One of the key responsibilities of a change management consultant is to assess and identify areas where changes are needed. That might include changes to;
- employees,
- business systems,
- processes.
Because change managers are experts, they understand the changes that need to be made, so it is their responsibility to ensure implementation of the change in the most effective way possible.
They’ll assess key situations and put several plans in place at both management and department levels to make sure your change happens as it should. They’ll set milestones and deadlines, and plan for potential roadblocks.
They’ll also work to make sure your employees are onboard with your merger. Humans are conditioned to dislike change, but your change manager will get a good idea of who is likely to oppose your changes and use tried and tested techniques to make sure those individuals do not upset the merger.
Change managers are communication experts, so they can keep stakeholders and employees informed of what is happening and why, and make it clear what each individual needs to do to make this M&A easier for absolutely everyone. They do that by highlighting the benefits of the change, keeping the trust of the employees as they do.
The responsibilities of a change management consultant
To help you, here’s a list of a change manager’s key responsibilities.
- Overseeing and leading change management projects.
- Managing the communications internally.
- Creating and leading training sessions.
- Understanding company projects and communicating them to others.
- Understanding sales initiatives and prospects, and actively participating in any meetings relating to this.
- Being a mentor, and supporting those assigned to tasks where required to do so.
- Building long term relationships.
- Identifying communication strategies, working on them, reviewing them, and reporting on plans, which will then be given to executive members.
- Leading colleague engagement programs for internal change management.
- Understanding and acknowledging issues that have been presented to them by the client, and resolving them to the standard that exceeds expectation.
Conclusion
Change can be challenging in business, and this is why it is really important you bring on board an expert to help you to manage it, or else you might find yourself in the middle of an incredibly complex business mess that it’s virtually impossible to unwind and reset.
The earlier you can employ a change management consultant, the better.
If you can’t employ a consultant, you should almost certainly put one of your existing staff members in charge of managing your organisational change. You should be aware, though, that this person is not likely to have time to do anything else, which might halt productivity.
You should also consider the fact that this person is likely not a trained change manager, and therefore is unlikely to have the skills required to do this effectively, and without any hiccups.