Time’s up for merger and acquisition synergy

The mergers and acquisitions world sprinkles potential deals with a bit of pixie dust called synergy. Synergy is neither rational, functional, nor logical.

If HR used the word synergy in an accounting meeting? Laughed out of the room. If HR or human capital used the word synergy in a corporate finance discussion? The time value of money, that is rational. What will it cost? What return will it realize? When will it realize that return? All rational.

Synergy? Synergy is more a pagan fairy than rational way to make a deal.

Community persona for SharePoint intranet design

SharePoint intranet site design that leaves out understanding user need offers little more than propaganda for what you hope sells.

Hope for a community to buy-in is not much of a strategy.

Conversely, community commitment happens when people return to seek value, exchange value, and contribute value with, and for, each other.

Can you build that? Yes, particularly when you start with a community persona strategy to identify end-user motivations and the transparency to contribute to their need.

facebook, employee engagement, wrong, Toby Elwin, blog

What’s wrong with employee engagement? Ask Facebook

Praise in public, scold in private. Many are coached on this. But what happens when a single manager’s lack of self-awareness meets the level of the Facebook video a father posted to his daughter? See video below?

What, you ask, can the paternal bond of a father and a daughter offer management? The situation, I witness far too often, is a manager’s tough love, just as a father hides behind, will snap an employee or co-worker back into line. The father in this video uses tough love and tough love seems a viable option in a far too many manager tool kits, as well.

People, process, and technology … divided by behavior

People, process, and technology is not a law, it is a rule of thumb; we could quibble that people should not need it’s own category, as both process and technology rely on people. However, it is clear in most change that people draw the short straw in design.

I propose we include behavior into functional design.

Company social media strategy reflects organization culture — marketing

Insight into corporate, social media strategy lends insight into governance. Insight into social media management lends insight into employee management.

A company marketing strategy and the people who lead, develop, and execute that marketing strategy, are a proxy for organization culture.

If web 1.0 brought about the concept content is king, the maturity to a web 2.0 and social media environment are achieved through the concept community is king. You can you develop a community unless you are a transparent part of a community.

The final frontier of competitive advantage

If your company and my company recruit the same person and your company can not motivate that person, but my company can keep that person motivated: I win.

I’ll take an employee with half the technical skills who is motivated, over an employee with more technical skills who is unmotivated. We maximize resources to survive and motivation management is resources management.

If your company and my company need a series of projects to roll out a new strategic plan and your company can not deliver on those projects, but my company can: I win.

Crowdsourcing your organization strategy, what’s to appreciate?

Crowdsourcing taps into the sociological power of people potentially unfamiliar with each other or with the situation. Crowdsourcing a strategic solution is the antithesis of the bureaucratic, and often autocratic, strategic planning performed by chosen few, behind closed doors, and finally unleashed unto the masses.

Appreciative Inquiry is a process where people participate and co-create a future they wish to be part of. Where people, formerly known as an audience of employees or stakeholders, now become the collaborators and designers who are approached as partners in modeling and forming organization strategy.

The result: replace a strategic plan pronouncement with strategic plan involvement.

Mergers and acquisitions failures are project management failures

Mergers and acquisitions failures are really business strategy project management failures

No matter the motive for a merger or acquisition the real work comes with integration.

Similar to a project scope statement that identifies the success criteria for a project, the only way to identify success or failure is within the scope of the M&A goals.

Subsequently, the risk in mergers and acquisitions comes down to the ability of a team to deliver within budget, by a certain time, and up to project expectation (scope) and project failure rates for M&A deals are strikingly high.

Mergers and acquisitions systems thinking strategies, part 2

When evaluating merger integration risk the reality is true integration risk identification can only happen with an evaluation of systems integration. Without front-end, due diligence on human capital integration then too often the deal becomes a post-merger write-off. The result: wasted opportunity, multiples on paper only, and “synergies” left back on the deal table or with the executive hand-shake.