Inarticulate ramblings of a management consultant

the day to day experiences of a consultant operating in weird and wonderful client situations

Tag Archive for ‘internal communications’

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Due diligence in an emerging market – the management interviews – lots of communication, perhaps less understanding!

Last week I explored the challenges of doing diligence on a fictitious family owned business based in Indonesia, from the perspective of the CEO (the link is here if you missed it). This week, let’s have a playful look at the next stage in the process…the management interviews, again from the perspective of the CEO of the business being acquired. This is the accumulation of a number of my experiences […]

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What’s the big deal with hostile transactions?

The flow of transactions has been noted in this blog and throughout the financial press. In addition, the FT led an article earlier this week noting the volume of hostile deals (US appetite for hostile takeovers hits post-crisis high) as the M&A market heats up. I want to address in this some of the key challenges that distinguish hostile from friendly transactions. From my perspective, they fall broadly into 4 […]

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Program managing post merger integration – different from other complex projects?

I’ve had a number of very heated conversations with colleagues about the nature of post merger integration in recent weeks. The two positions are easy to understand; on the one hand, there is the perspective that a deal is just another complex transformation project with all the usual challenges. On the other side of the debate, the argument goes that post merger integration represents a wholly different type of challenge […]

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How M&A destroys value – it’s all about the small things!

I’m working on a couple of transactions at the moment around the region and one of them in Indonesia led to a moment of insight which I wanted to share. As consultants, we are frequently accused of looking for the big impact change…the magic bullet which will dramatically transform the project / or open the stakeholders eyes to a new way of doing things. In the mergers and acquisitions area though, […]

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Telling the truth or giving a public opinion…a political minefield!

With apologies for a slightly introverted blog, I wanted to raise an interesting issue which has been raised by three people this week who’ve somehow stumbled upon this random collection of thoughts and ideas in the last week. It appears that what people like most about this blog is the candour and openness of the commentary. Why is it so difficult these days to give an honest opinion without fear […]

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Working from home….management’s last bastion of control

The nature of the office workplace has changed almost beyond recognition in the last 30 years. The pace of change in terms of activity, responsibility, speed of communication, access to information and people, and complexity of the ‘transaction’ whatever the company might be engaged in, are all vastly different. Gone are vast numbers of manual tasks and with them activities and roles in the workplace. What is required these days […]

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Communications…how and why we continue to get it wrong!

Three truths about communication which are accepted by most: Non-verbal communication constitutes 70-80% of the message (tone and body language to be precise). Human beings are extraordinarily good at perceiving that which is authentic and that which is not. Leaders lead through the power of their communication capability. Every project manager I’ve ever met, when asked about the core skill required that distinguishes the average from the exceptional in their […]

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The chemistry and physics of communications

It is remarkable how bad many organisations are at something which is at the very heart of the human experience. We are all experts in communication, it is an activity which we live and breathe to such an extent that we’re mostly ‘doing’ it unconsciously. And yet, when it comes to our corporate life, there are very few times when the companies we work for, deliver clear, well written messages. […]

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