CultureStrategyFit

successstories

Are we ready for an acquisition?

This award-winning professional services firm is acclaimed within its industry and recognized nationally for its people management practices. It has invested significantly in developing talented, empowering leaders and creating an environment for high performance. The business had grown steadily and an option of more aggressive growth through acquisition was now under consideration. It was intriguing to the President that recent changes to benefits had met with surprising resistance.

We used the Culture Snapshot to assess the cultural patterns in operation and what the implications of these were. A key finding was that culture strengths were beginning to act as a double-edged sword. For example, the belief that the firm had established the behaviors and practices that guaranteed award-winning results was leading to less internal adaptation and external focus than would be expected. With openness to change low, there was high risk that changes to practices would be resisted and that appreciation of another firm's approaches would be low. The value of an acquisition, unless it was an equally award-winning firm, would be wrung out within months.

Recommendations for improving internal adaptation were provided and were installed into daily operations. One year later the firm's Culture Snapshot had improvement not just in internal adaptation, but across all culture patterns. It remains a firm that is able to attract the best in its business and is more ready now to consider growth through acquisition.

Sponsors
President

Services
Culture Snapshot

Outcome
Impact of culture on acquisition success determined