The human problems in a big deal are natural in–and vital to–all for the integration preparing actions involved in evaluation, due diligence, closing, and postclosing phases. Those issues include starting leadership designed for the short- to mid-term integration hard work, as well as management roles with regards to the new, longer-term company.

One key element should be to identify which will decisions would be best made in the executive business office, and which should be parceled out to the mixing taskforces. The goal is always to keep the availablility of executive-level decisions to a minimum and align them with the timeframe needed to deliver on integration marks. In the consumer goods company, for instance , the decision-management office aimed at only the 20 percent of decisions most important to getting synergy objectives and kept the rest for the taskforces. This kind of allowed the integration process to go at maximum speed, and the taskforce management gained vital management knowledge that led to promotion opportunities.

Another issue is to make perfectly sure that managers in the base organization have obvious useful content aims and bonuses to keep the businesses whistling, even as they pursue integration. Or else, talented people may wander away to competitors. Additionally, it is important to package customer and stakeholder devices, especially within a systems transformation, to avoid turmoil.