The M&A period is a period of change, of transition and sometimes it is even an upheaval. It is in fact linked to organizational, logistical an human restructuring within the organization. It is a delicate period because strategic for the life of a company. For the transition to be successful, it is essential to obtain the support of all the actors.

Resistance to change is natural and getting out of your comfort zone to go to  the unknown is scaring.
Changing your habits, adopting new ways of doing things, of working, having new colleagues, moving offices, learning new techniques require an effort that not everyone is ready to do.

Most often there is an intercultural issue with different cases of interculturality :

 -national culture  

-business culture  

-job culture

-intergenerational culture

Culture is a major element in a business. This element can not be taken lightly because it largely determines the failure or success of the operation. It is for the individual, whatever his hierarchical position, to understand the other in his cultural difference, to accept and cooperate.

Mergers and acquisitions excel in this exercise because it often brings several cases of interculturality, even all.

Let's take the example: a French glass group that buys a small family business, Italian cartonnier, have the same purpose: the packaging market for luxury wines and spirits. The common objective is legitimate: for the group, to integrate its own manufacture of cartonnage for the bottles, for the cartonnier, the unexpected chance to increase its business and to perpetuate the company.

At first glance, there is everything to bring them closer, but in fact, everything separates them : the job is not the same, the national culture is different, the corporate culture too. The Italian company is composed mainly of ancient skills with ancestral know-how while the French glass group in full swing has renewed its core competencies over the years and integrated a lot of young dynamic executives, formatted in the age of digital and social networks.

 Complementary professions generate the need for the respective teams to work together to offer the end customer a full service. How to do it ?

Mergers and acquisitions are a real shake and represent a real challenge because, in the end, it is the men and women within the organizations concerned who will have to take it up.

To accompany a company, executive committees, managers, teams, is a real job. It cannot be improvised. It is essential, just like the financial audit, the legal preparation, the due diligence.

It is on of  the keys for the operation to be a success story.

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