The people part and the learning part are culture’s essential features, and these often run at odds with the realities of M&A, where the general principle for decisions emphasize “speed over precision.” Both these principles, the need for We don’t try to push ‘cultural’ ideas up speed and prioritization, must be applied to any culture work to HQ but keep them at the acquiring in the M&A context. As one participant stated, “The whole business unit level. For example, if M&A transaction is a compromise — between rules and the seller has better ways of selling realities, perfection and time.” to customers, or keeping them, or So, to illustrate some of the misperceptions and challenges expanding them, or charging them a with this topic, let’s review what one CEO said about culture premium, then that’s the sort of stuff in a huge merger. we want to learn and adopt. But we also need to clearly identify the key employees who truly drive most of these customer relationships, and often that is not as easy as it seems on paper, and even then, we run into another problem. Often the way they are paid is not the way we pay our similarly situated employees.” Business Unit Leader 8 willistowerswatson.com