Insights
Heidrick & Struggles: Navigating Top Talent Decisions for Mergers and Acquisitions
Organizations undergoing a major transformation, such as a merger or acquisition, know that getting the right leaders into the right roles will accelerate performance. But too many organizations make decisions about their leadership teams in ways that slow them down. How can they develop a clear, fair, and timely process to ensure the best-fit team is steering the organization?
During most mergers, companies focus on strategy, synergies, process, technology and intellectual property, valuation, and so forth from the beginning. They create internal teams and mobilize suites of advisers - consultants, lawyers, accountants - to address these topics. Such due diligence is crucial to success. Yet far too few organizations take the time to apply the same level of rigor to the selection of their leadership teams, which can lead to a host of barriers to long-term transaction success: brain drain, customer disruption, value destruction, and culture clashes.
Companies can best avoid these pitfalls by ensuring they align the new structure and roles to the strategy behind the transformation, define the culture that will drive future growth and select leaders who can shape and embody that culture, and make and communicate decisions at pace.
Heidrick & Struggles published this latest article in their Leadership Assessment Knowledge Center, covering the following topics:
- Aligning the new structure with the transformation strategy
- A well-designed selection process
- Choosing leaders who can shape and who embody the future culture: The shadow of the leader
- Make-and communicate-decisions at pace
- Getting to the best fit