Although the integration of an acquired company with the parent
organization is a delicate and complicated process, traditionally no one
has ever been responsible for that process--for charting how the two
companies will combine their operations, for seeing to it that the
integration project meets its deadlines and performance targets, and for
educating the new people about the parent company and vice-versa. Some
enlightened companies have recognized this gap and have appointed a
guide--the integration manager--to shepherd everyone through the rocky
territory that two organizations must cross before they can function
effectively together. The authors have interviewed a number of these
leaders in depth, as well as some of the people with whom they've
worked. They've determined that integration managers help the merger
process in four principal ways: they speed it up, create a structure for
it, forge social connections between the two organizations, and help
engineer short-term successes. In this article, the authors detail five
acquisitions--at TI, General Cable, Meritor Automotive, Lucent, and
Johnson & Johnson--and discuss the role that integration managers
played in each.
This article explores the work of the Integration Manager. It draws on
the diverse experiences of five integration managers, and distills them
into four strategies for driving integration success.