Third, too few critical decisions based on what has been done not on actually researching what needs to be done. There is a mantra in carpentry that says measure twice cut once. The implication is that if you plan properly the number and cost of mistakes will be far more manageable. Much of the standard acquisition process is seemingly designed to conform the acquired company to the acquiring firm, which should, seemingly, make management easier. The thing is it doesn’t, it just replaces one set of problems (inconsistencies) with another set that includes increased turnover, lower productivity, lost direction, and both employee and customer dissatisfaction.
So in order to avoid complaints about title creep, salary disparities and inconsistencies in process firms will literally destroy the acquired firm. This doesn’t seem like a good judgment call, yet it is the one most commonly made.
Finally, there is an excessive focus on blame and virtually no focus on figuring out why prior acquisitions failed. This is true of a lot of decisions not just acquisitions. But generally what happens when an acquisition fails is some executive, or executives, get fired, however, these executives usually weren’t the ones who caused the problem and, in some cases, they may have been the most aggressive in trying to fix it.
In some cases they got caught covering it up. But in all cases, simply doing a detailed post-mortem on why the failure occurred and then using that as a way to assure it doesn’t happen again would have been far more effective. I mean, think about it, the folks who get fired were likely the only ones truly motivated to assure it doesn’t happen again. This helps explain why these mistakes are made over and over again.
Stop blaming and start learning from mistakes
I think, overall, the big problem with decisions like this is an excess focus on blame and not enough focus on learning from mistakes so they don’t recur. Some companies just seem to be rolling train wrecks of repeated mistakes largely because the folks closest to the problems are the ones who are let go. As a result the firm gains no real knowledge on how to avoid future similar problems. In addition, the higher you go in a company the more confirmation bias seems to rule decisions and the “way it has always been done” drives process.
If you want to fix something, focus on finding the cause of the problem, not on shooting the folks in charge, you’ll likely make far more progress and both be far more successful and less afraid of being shot yourself. Something to noodle on this weekend.
