Post M&A Culture Clash
Acquiring a business is easy. Integrating leadership, aligning decision-making, and retaining talent across two legacies? That’s the real work. And it starts with culture.
THE PROBLEM
If you don’t design the culture, it’ll design itself
Bringing two businesses together isn’t just a financial transaction. When two organisations merge, a new culture will form – whether you shape it or not. But if it’s left to chance, it’ll be built on conflicting behaviours, legacy leadership habits, informal power dynamics, and unspoken rules.
In complex integrations, culture left unmanaged becomes culture by accident, and that’s a sure-fire way to stall delivery, spark division, and burn through the ROI the deal was meant to deliver.
Risk Area
Risk Area
What Breaks
What Breaks
Risk Area
Risk Area
What Breaks
What Breaks
Risk Area
What Breaks
Risk Area
What Breaks
Risk Area
What Breaks
Risk Area
What Breaks
THE SOLUTION
From full culture change programmes to targeted leadership development, employee experience, and DEIB programmes designed to support cohesive cultures, we’ve been providing bespoke culture consultancy programmes for over 15 years.
Here’s how we help you turn culture into a driver of merger success:
We begin with a thorough culture assessment – surveys, interviews, data reviews – to map alignment, friction points, and micro-cultural risks between the merging organisations.
Together, we define the cultural strategy: blend, adopt, or create anew. Always rooted in your strategic objectives and the deal’s value drivers.
We align newly formed leadership teams around a shared vision, agreed behaviours, and clear integration expectations.
When leaders are unified, they build trust, model the change, and set the tone for aligned delivery across all teams.
Change is done with people, not to them.
We involve employees through workshops, forums, and co-creation teams – surfacing concerns, building trust, and creating ownership of the new culture.
Clear comms and regular updates reduce noise and accelerate buy-in.
We translate culture into action through every stage of the employee lifecycle, upskilling managers along the way.
Our toolkits and behavioural frameworks embed the new ways of working so culture lives in the day-to-day, not just on the wall.
We track adoption, engagement, and performance – adjusting in real time to overcome blockers.
With feedback loops and governance in place, the culture evolves with your business and continues to drive long-term value.
THE RESULTS
We’ve supported numerous post-M&A integrations, and the results speak for themselves. Time and time again, our structured culture design and embedding approach has helped clients maintain momentum, retain talent, and deliver the value their deals were built on.
Award Winning
As OSB merged with Charter Court, we delivered diagnostics, design, and alignment to secure confidence from leadership, regulators, and employees.
Award Winning
Following a major acquisition, we unified two global organisations with shared ways of working, enabling faster delivery and employee confidence across geos.
Award Winning
Award Winning
A new cultural identity, four values, and consistent leadership behaviours embedded at pace to support rapid integration and protect business momentum.
Award Winning
Years of acquisition had left Arriva siloed. We designed and embedded a unified culture – ‘The Arriva Way’ – bringing 55,000 people together under one vision.
Our Team
Culture Consultancy delivers
creative, innovative, and tailored
solutions.
DIRECTOR
Jo Geraghty
Ex-head of HR for Goldman Sachs, speaker, and author on the topics of high-performance leadership, culture and employee experience.
consultant
Natalie Saunders
A senior people leader and employment lawyer with board-level experience, specialising in culture change and HR transformation.
consultant
Paul Longshaw
With two decades’ experience and a background in BP’s global social investment, Paul helps organisations unlock performance through people.
DIRECTOR
Derek Bishop
Former AXA Head of Customer Service, thought leader, and author with over 20 years experience leading teams and delivering results.
consultant
Andrew Gillespie
A business psychologist who specialises in helping organisations align culture, purpose, talent, and leadership.
consultant
Ed Beard
An organisational psychologist with more than 15 years experience working with clients like the BBC, HSBC, and Expedia.
consultant
Cris Beswick
A world renowned thought leader on innovation and how to align strategy, leadership, and culture to drive sustainable growth.
Let’s talk about your culture and what’s next
You’ll be speaking with Jo Geraghty, our founder and culture expert. She’ll personally guide you through your next steps
Frequently asked questions
Up to 70% of M&A failures stem from cultural misalignment. Culture defines how decisions are made, how people collaborate, and how quickly the organisation can realise synergies. By making culture integration a central part of your M&A strategy, you accelerate alignment, reduce friction, and protect deal value.
Ideally, a culture will be assessed as part of the initial due diligence. Whilst the findings may be unlikely to change the business / commercial decision, treating culture integration as part of M&A due diligence allows you to anticipate alignment challenges early and design the right interventions from Day One. Early cultural insights protect deal value and enable faster post-merger execution.
Companies that integrate culture effectively after a merger achieve faster synergy realisation, higher engagement, and improved retention of key talent. This translates into tangible financial gains – faster time to value, reduced attrition costs, and sustained competitive advantage.
Post-merger alignment is a journey, not a milestone. We help build internal capability through leadership development, tailored onboarding, and digital dashboards that track engagement and performance over time. Our Culture Embed Platform enables continuous measurement and adaptation as your organisation evolves.
Making
Complexity
Simple.
