Skills of Integration Managers

The success of a merger integration program highly depends on the skills of integration managers and the integration team´s skills. So, what are these skills?

Skills of Integration Managers:
Managers that assign responsible for managing an integration project on a day-to-day basis require various personal skills, such as listening, communication, stakeholder management and people skills. However, in addition to these “soft skills” Integration Manager require also more “harder skills” such as project management, business know how and organizational know how. The entire skill-set that is required for successfully managing a post merger integration can typically be acquired only through first hand experience on-the-job. Therefore a valid question in many cases is, if one single individual should manage an integration project alone. A team of people with complementary skills that is led by a senior executive might be a more appropriate solution for integration management in many cases. However, taking into consideration that corporate top performer are typically not sitting on the bench waiting to be assigned to any post merger integration project (but are rather already busy with other important tasks) staffing of Integration Management is a often marked by compromises.

Skills of integration team members:
Skills that are required on the level of integration teams might include among others leadership, operative know-howand team management. Different to Integration Management where only few peoplemight get involved (often located within one corporate center) 100 and more operationalmanagers across various geographic regions are easily tight up as team members in a post merger integration. This includes typically not only managers and staff from the buying company but also managers and staff from the target company. Therefore PMI training with regard to team members is often more complex than with regard to Integration Management. Due to confidentiality aspects, time constraints and geographic spread in many cases pure digital courses that are accessible across multiple technical devices and teaching environments are the only way to train 100 and more operational manager from both the buyer and target being.

Come to the European workshop on merger integration and learn more