Hello, everyone. This is Bill Gullan President of Finch Brands. Today is M&A Minute. We advocate for the power of purpose, mission, and values as the key ideas on which high-performance brands and businesses are based as cultural anchors for an internal team.

Identifying Purpose, Mission, and Values During M&A

In change moments like a merger and acquisition, purpose, mission, and values become very important artifacts of a company’s internal culture. Today, we’re going to underline their importance and talk about the role of purpose, mission,and values in periods of M&A activity.

Purpose, mission, and values can be important instruments in conveying central ideas to the deal thesis, both internally and externally. In an M&A moment, there is change. So, it makes sense to evaluate a company’s purpose, mission, and values in moments of change. The deal might change something meaningful, such as an expansion in capabilities, new products, services, geographic expansion, or the ability to serve a new market.

These are fundamental types of questions that should give management the right impetus to reflect on purpose, mission,and value. The M&A activity that’s triggering change may be meaningful enough that purpose, mission, and value should shift in any case.

Purpose, Mission, and Values for Cultural Integration

Purpose, mission, and values are important tools to promote cultural integration. In M&A moments, existing teammates are wondering what it all means. New teammates are joining the fold. It’s a perfect time to evaluate these key cultural artifacts because they are central ideas that organize, unify, and inspire teammates. And again, an enterprise in an M&A moment is shifting and reshaping.

For new management teams and often in M&A situations, there is some shift in how the leadership team is formed. With the new ratification of the leadership team, a perfect topic for that team to work on is purpose, mission, and value.

It could be a reflection to ensure that the lead company’s existing purpose, mission, and value statements remain relevant. It can be an appropriate opportunity to spread existing messages to new teammates.

For new leaders who are getting to know one another, the act of coming together through the crafting and the ratification of purpose, mission, and values is a terrific experience for a leadership team.

Activate Your Purpose, Mission, and Values’ Full Potential

Purpose, mission, and values can be an important element of that overall day one story to customers and the prospects of the M&A news. There’s a bunch of different reasons why purpose, mission, and values are a good early-stage element of an M&A execution plan.

Whatever the right outcome, purpose, mission, and values are important elements and signals internally of purpose.They represent what the business exists to do and the change we make in the world.

The mission is the key ways in which we pursue that purpose and execute against it. Values are those key mindsets or behaviors that enable us to have a high-performing, culturally aligned team across the business to enable the organization to activate its full potential.

We believe strongly in and around day one in purpose, mission, and values, not only as an ongoing cultural artifact, but as a particular action item within that transitional process. This has been M&A Minute. If you have any questions, contact Finch Brands today and subscribe to our YouTube channel for future videos.