Take out a piece of printer paper. Fold it in half twice. Unfold it. You have quadrants. Turn the paper sideways. To the landscape position. Now use a pencil and an eraser:
1. Baseline Number
First, take the size of the investment in the combination. If integration goes wrong, it is that number which is threatened. Write that number in the top-left quadrant.
2. Business Reasons
Second, in the bottom-left quadrant list the main business reasons for combining the companies. Pencil in no more than five. These are the areas in which integration has to succeed in order to meet the baseline number, meaning for the combination to succeed.
3. Who with whom
Third, in the top-right quadrant list those of the max. five main reasons which are dependent on successful cross-border collaboration. Then sketch out per reason, and on a separate piece of paper: who will be collaborating with whom, on what, and why. These are the colleagues I will work closely with.
Back to Align post-merger.
