Be sure to use a balanced approach in your goal setting and take care of all the important areas of your life. Determine what "enough" is for you and go for it!

Dealing with cultural changes of two organizations is a huge challenge. Mitigate the effects of these changes well.

“Culture is simply a shared way of doing something with a passion.”– Brian Chesky, Co-Founder, CEO, Airbnb

An M&A goes through because it looks great on paper, the numbers line up and it makes sense from a business perspective. But does the M&A team pause and think about how two companies with cultural differences can integrate well or poorly? Nancy Rothbard, a management professor at Wharton said that the failure rate of mergers is close to 75%. And the culture has been central to that failure.

An example of a successful merger is the coming together of the legendary Walt Disney and Pixar that was a match made in cartoon heaven. This merger made perfect sense because Disney used to distribute all of Pixar’s movies before. With this merger, both the companies could collaborate freely and easily.

Not all mergers work out. When Procter & Gamble bought Gillette for $57 billion, the fact that 6,000 people lost their jobs was all but buried in the details of a deal that linked some of the world’s most well-known household brands.

Here are a few things to be kept in mind during the M&A process.

Understand and Discover

Understand the culture of your own organization well and find out about the culture of the new organization. Get together with the leaders of the other organization and ask questions about their mission, goals, and values, as well as the working style, environment, and communication. Identify the differences, make a note of the successes and have a plan of how to cope with all the changes.

Do not expect miracles to happen straightway

Since both the organizations are made up of human beings rather than robots, it would be difficult to expect things to work well straight off and magically assimilate everyone into a perfect culture. Implement the best cultural aspects of both the companies. If the cultures are fairly similar and go along steady lines, then do not attempt to fix it. Let it be for a little while before you reexamine it at a later stage.

Create a cultural leadership team

It is very important to have a group that can focus on the cultural integration. It would be a good idea to assemble a cross-functional team of people from both the organizations that can address the desires and concerns of all the employees. This group should also be able to define processes and procedures that will make sense in the new culture. When Daimler Benz and Chrysler merged, the upright, hierarchical approach to things at Daimler and the risk-taking, entrepreneurial, loose organization at Chrysler forced many top executives to leave just ahead of the merger.

Talk to the employees

The predominant emotion that emerges out of M&As is the fear that employees have. They worry about staff redundancies and that they would be asked to leave and that their counterparts in the other organization would fare better. Share regular updates about what is happening and what is likely to happen and give constant encouragement to all employees, in-house or virtual. Encourage managers to get their teams together as often as possible, through lunches, meetings, and get-togethers during this difficult time.

A merged and a successful culture will not take place overnight. Deep relationships will take time to develop. Show patience, care, and attention.

30/01/2018, 8:39 a.m. - +91 98330 34510: He got into the lift and pressed 28. She pressed 27. He was carrying a heavy bag on his shoulder all through in the lift. Intrigued, at the 14th floor, she asked him “why do you have to carry it all the way up. You should just keep the bag down when there is no need to carry! Your shoulders could hurt”. He smiled and kept it down feeling really relieved. He thanked her with a deep sense of gratitude because what she taught him was a life lesson.

We all carry our bags of responsibilities and worries all the time even when we are not actually working on them or when we are doing some other activity. They add undue pressure to us leaving behind lesser ability to deal with them when we actually need to. Can we keep our bags down when we don’t need them or if someone else is helping us in the journey?

Keep Setting Goals

Exactly What is Success?

Is success measured by how much money you have? How happy you are? How satisfied? Is success really just up to you?

Here's the Merriam-Webster definition:

noun: 1) satisfactory completion of something. 2) the gaining of wealth and fame. 3) one that succeeds.

We especially like the first definition. Success is the "satisfactory completion of something", but the satisfactory completion of what?

Then we came up with this formula:

S=GxA

"S" is success, "G" stands for goals, and "A" for achievement. Success is the result of your goals multiplied by the number of times you achieve your goals. In other words, the more times you achieve your goals, the more successful you are.

Simple…

But definition number two says "the gaining of wealth and fame". Can you really be successful without wealth and fame? I don't think so. However, the way you define wealth and fame is very important in determining your personal vision of success.

In the Dynamic Components of Personal Power philosophy wealth means to have "enough". You need enough to create satisfaction in 3 areas of life: material, emotional and spiritual. Wealth means having abundance in each of these areas. What constitutes abundance in each area depends entirely on your personal needs and desires.

Fame is the people you know and the people who know you. You can't create success in a vacuum. You need people who need your services, and you need people who can help you create and deliver those services.

It is said that to be successful; you have to develop wealth and fame. The rest is really up to you!

This is why goals are so important. You decide exactly what your goals and ambitions are. The more often you design goals specific to your vision of success, and the more often you achieve your goals, the more successful you become.

That's why someone may have a lot of money without feeling successful. That's why people who control others by fear and domination are not necessarily successful, only feared and tolerated for a time.

On the other hand, you may be very well respected and admired and feel a great spiritual connection with the universe, but if you don't have enough money you also may feel like a failure.

There are people who have very little money and still feel successful materially, emotionally and spiritually. I admire these people. Remember, anyone who has "enough" can be successful. Only you can determine what "enough" is for you is.

So, how does one become successful?

Pay attention to all three areas, material, emotional and spiritual. Set goals in each area and achieve those goals. It's really that simple.

Of course, things don't always go the way you planned. One of the most interesting traits of successful people I've found through my study is that successful people fail...a lot! They're also the ones who pick themselves up, dust themselves off and... you know the rest!

Create a big picture vision of your ultimate success. Then set manageable goals that take you incrementally toward this ultimate success.

Keep setting goals. Keep achieving as many goals as possible. Inevitable failures become of the learning curve leading to your ultimate success. Failure is just tuition! When you experience failure, set goals that help you make a course correction and orient yourself back toward success.

S=GxA

In the above formula you can see that the more goals you set and achieve, the greater your feeling of success. Be sure to use a balanced approach in your goal setting and take care of all the important areas of your life. Determine what "enough" is for you and go for it!