Driving Value Creation by Aligning Hearts & Minds in Acquisition
The Context
Dubai based aviation technology company; Mercator was acquired by Warburg Pincus with immediate follow-on acquisition activity. Mercator had circa 500 employees and had been fully owed by the Emirates group. The acquisition enabled Mercator to increase its market share and accelerate growth, while adding a further 200 employees to its workforce.
The Challenge
There are many benefits of bringing together two businesses - leveraging the strengths of both organisations can result in building a more effective, sustainable, and innovative company. It is however, essential during any acquisition, that employee engagement and productivity are maintained during the process, and the desired company vision and values are instilled throughout the organisation.
Team alignment and the implementation of a compelling vision, supported by meaningful and lived values, was required for this newly formed organisation to succeed.
The Approach
We worked closely with the investor group, Board of Directors and CEO, to co-create a solution that would fulfil all aspects of client partnership. The programme was rolled out over two phases:
Phase One – Strategy Development
A series of sessions with the senior leadership team, including a 4-day offsite, set out to define the company vision, mission and values. Collectively, Prism and the team developed a strategy that aligned the functional objectives of the business and set key metrics to measure overall performance. This included a company-wide process to cascade this thinking and bring the entire organization into alignment and bring the vision, mission and values to life.
Phase Two – Team Alignment
The objective of phase 2 was to cascade the vision, mission, strategy & behaviors in a way that would resonate with each employee globally. The CEO and the senior leadership team were heavily engaged with the delivery, in order to outline their roles in the journey and create alignment from the top down.
To build energy, engagement and commitment with the newly formed company brand, every employee across 4 continents participated in a series of “We are Mercator” workshops. This included a “swag bag” with visual icons to reinforce the brand connection, and a workbook to support the session as a reference point. Participants engaged in a deep-dive, reflecting on the meaning of the value statements for them and how they could align themselves with the ambition of the organisation. Ownership was placed on all employees to become leaders in championing the evolution of the organisation. Each participant identified ways in which they could personally to contribute to the achievement of the strategic pillars. A clear link for each employee between their role & behaviors and the overall company strategy was outlined. Wrap up activities included personal goal-setting, and a memory wall with stand-out ideas from the session. This fully engaged employees with the vision, strategy and values, while allowing each of them to influence the trajectory and speed at which that was achieved.
Sustainability
In order to sustain momentum, Prism followed up with an energetic global activity the following quarter to further engage employees in the values and behaviours.
Key messages from each of the sessions were collated by Prism, and fed back to the senior leadership team, informing the design of the Leadership Academy development programmes for the next phase in achieving organisational alignment and development strategy.
The Impact
Organisational alignment and energy was a key factor in tripling the company’s profitability and driving 30%+ growth, but also precipitated the entity’s earlier than expected purchase approach which well exceeded the original investment thesis.
30%+ Mercator's profitability
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30%+ Mercator's profitability ·
“By partnering with Prism, we achieved alignment and an upsurge in energy around the organisation far quicker than we would have by a traditional roll-out approach. Together we drove a performance based culture and a clarity of purpose that the company had failed to achieve in the previous two years and prior to this process. The consistency, accountability, ambition and energy Prism brought to the project changed the way the way we thought about behaviours and gave everyone the opportunity to engage, socialise and bring to life our Mercator Way – and it made a big difference to the value of the company.
In short we changed what employees understood about leadership, it was not just the domain of the management team but every employee in every room. And this completely changed everything for the company.”
