When two companies join forces through either a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or partnership, the value that drove them to combine is unlocked one decision at a time. The state of each company at the time of the merger was the result of past decisions concerning their strategy, core competencies, business models, markets, products, facilities, organization, etc. The merger fuses together the decision models for the two companies; each strategic decision should be revisited to innovate and evaluate new combined alternatives (solutions) that will create greater value (better outcomes) than the individual parties could deliver in the past.
The sooner this blended decision model is created and made visible, the better. This should be done when shaping the partnership, so that the estimated value of the new enterprise is based on a joint strategic roadmap, not just billions in accounting “goodwill”. Even better if the blended decision model is made explicit when searching for, evaluating and “what-iffing” potential partnership candidates.
Proven decision patterns like those delivered in our Decision Driven® Strategy web service can greatly accelerate this burst of strategic decision-blending. The steps are as follows:
- Capture a Decision Network baseline for each company based on a common strategic decision pattern
- Identify high priority decisions for each company that have solution gaps (could benefit from partnership synergies)
- Combine the 2 decision models (blend alternatives for each high priority decision).
- Synthesize new alternatives for these decisions (e.g. hybrid solutions enabled by the partnership)
- Evaluate (using a proven criteria pattern) and commit to new alternatives for these decisions
- Drive execution of these decisions to unlock the value of the partnership
The integrated Roadmap view within Decision Driven® Strategy is particularly helpful in visualizing the blended strategy as a before-and-after strategy roadmap.
Filed under: Decision Concepts, Decision Driven Strategy | Tagged: acquisition, decision baseline, decision network, decision pattern, joint venture, merger, partnership, strategy, strategy decision, strategy roadmap, unlocking value, value-creation, what-iffing
