Cultural due diligence

So you know the M&A statistics. There are enough of them, after all. In a nutshell, they come to the conclusion that 50 to 70 percent of all mergers and acquisitions fail or do not yield the results hoped for.

How does this happen? The necessary tools for financial and legal due diligence were surely perfected long ago. Yes, but mergers and acquisitions rarely founder on financial or legal issues.

So where is it going wrong? Back to the statistics. Enquiries are regularly made among international managers in order to understand these statistics better. And what does the international manager say? That in mergers and acquisitions the main hurdles are culture shock and incompatible value systems.

Is this sufficient reason to take a thorough look at these obstacles prior to any merger or acquisition? Sufficient reason to map out in advance the cultural factors that will affect integration and cooperative mechanisms? Sufficient reason to enrich your due diligence with a cultural component?

Our cultural due diligence gives you a picture of the people and cultures behind the figures. A picture of the presuppositions, patterns of thought and behaviour, adopted principles of organisation, and so on. And also a picture of a variety of perceptions: What is good leadership? Good communication? Good business dealings? Good cooperation? Which culture(s) do people themselves say they belong to? Which cultures do the people themselves consider to have influence? What motivates the people? And so on and so on. A picture of what people consider normal, a picture of ‘what goes without saying’.

Our cultural due diligence is both a fully fledged tool for decision-making prior to a merger and a fully fledged management tool afterwards.