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As you’re leading your company for game-changing innovation, transformation, and growth in the New Year, perhaps M&A is part of your strategy. In this episode, we speak with “M&A Whisperer” Jennifer J. Fondrevay, Founder and Chief Humanity Officer of Day1Ready. We discuss a surprising way to bring certainty to M&A uncertainty.
Of course, before moving forward with any deal, it’s standard practice to conduct due diligence, valuation analysis, and other data gathering to document the benefits as well as the risks. Yet despite due diligence, we’ve seen that even the best laid plans can come up against unexpected and messy “people problems” during integration. Maybe you’ve seen this too.
The good news is there’s a surprisingly simple way called a “premortem” that can yield more insights into these issues in advance. Our returning guest, Jennifer Fondrevay, shares what a premortem is and the benefits of doing this before closing the deal. To illustrate this, Jennifer includes the story of what one CEO discovered from doing a premortem ahead of one of their deals. We also discuss three immediately useful ideas to create conditions for a successful premortem. These can help you and your organization bring more certainty to M&A uncertainty and maximize the ROI of the deal.
Jennifer is a speaker and author who advises leaders and their organizations on reducing the “unexpected people challenges” of Mergers & Acquisitions. After navigating multi-billion dollar M&A deals, Jennifer wrote the best-selling satirical business book “NOW WHAT? A Survivor’s Guide for Thriving through Mergers & Acquisitions.” Her expertise has been featured on Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS News, and published in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Inc.
A “Premortem” exercise can help us better mitigate the risk of “unexpected people problems” during M&A integration – Jennifer Fondrevay
This week on Growth Igniters® Radio:
- How Jennifer’s experiences in M&A dealmaking led her to write her book
- Jennifer’s rationale for applying the Premortem process to reduce the uncertainty of M&A deals before they are finalized
- The importance of top leaders’ leadership of the premortem exercise
- The three steps essential to the success of an M&A premortem
- Immediately useful ideas for creating the conditions that can increase M&A premortem success.
Resources for This Episode
- Learn more about Jennifer Fondrevay and connect with her on LinkedIn
- Read more about Jennifer’s book, “NOW WHAT? A Survivor’s Guide for Thriving Through Mergers & Acquisitions“
- Read Jennifer’s Forbes article: “Create Certainty During Mergers And Acquisitions With One Exercise“
- Listen to our previous conversation with Jennifer: Thriving Through M&A: It Starts at the Top
- Read Gary Klein’s Harvard Business Review article: “Performing a Project Premortem“
- Find out more about Pam’s keynote “Break Orbit: Achieving Long-Term Growth in a Short-Term World”