Merger announcements are now coming thick and fast. Hardly a week goes by without new major industrial or services groups deciding to join forces. Multinationals seem trapped in a race to secure an ever higher critical mass, compelled to grow continuously in order to remain in the market. A merger allows them to leap to a new level in one move.

Yet, surprising as it may seem, many of these mergers have been decided almost overnight and by highly restricted decision-making circles. It is not uncommon for the senior management of the companies in a group to learn of a merger at the same time as the public, or only a few minutes earlier, with no possible recourse. It has been said that some major tie-ups were decided over a good meal in a restaurant, during a lunch or dinner between two CEOs.

Such unions, however, involve gigantic changes that take several years before they are finally fully absorbed. Integrating two groups, each with its own personality, is an extremely complex process that is rarely fully mastered from the outset. Implementation timelines and problems are systematically underestimated. The most significant issues concern the human dimension, which is very rarely considered before launching into the venture. Unfortunately, this is a mistake, because motivated employees are the company’s most valuable asset. A merger is supposed to make a company more efficient and stronger. But if it neglects what makes it powerful, it destroys its potential and results are likely to be worse than expected.

Below are a few benchmarks for achieving the results expected from a merger:

• In addition to production, sales and management synergies, give at least as much weight to personnel issues: how can the motivation of executives and employees be secured?
• Not all merger-related issues can be resolved overnight. Setting up dozens of transition committees determined to catalog the smallest points still to be settled ultimately slows progress and adds their own inertia to the transition. The good old Pareto principle applies here too: focus immediately on the 20% of actions that will quickly resolve 80% of the problems.
• New scale, new structure: compromises between the existing structures of the two companies (which, incidentally, are not sized for the scale of the new group) often produce far from optimal results.
• Poor internal communication after the merger can raise more questions than it answers. Employees want clear, precise information about their personal future as quickly as possible. The brainwashing of grand advertising slogans is no longer appropriate.
• To buy into the new entity, employees must be involved in it. Real motivational drivers for staff must be relied upon, not just fear of being sidelined.