4 comments about Getting Your Shift Together : Making Sense of Organizational Culture and Change : Introducing Cultural Due Diligence (TM).

1. This book contains a great analysis of American business today. In an everchanging and fastpaced work environment focused on the bottom line, Pellett and Bouchard suggest that it is an organization's culture which will have the biggest impact to profitability and success. In a well written and easy style their narrative captured my attention with real-life anecdotes and solutions to business problems and challenges. Their cultural due diligence model is one that should be embraced by all companies wanting to improve productivity, quality, customer satisfaction and profits. Read it and give it to every CEO, Board Member and VP you know!



2. My favorite part is the point that when change initiatives fail, things never go back to the way they were before. This book makes you think about your blind spots, and how to not let them get in the way of making change work. The authors come off credible, with a "in the trenches" perspective. A good reality check.



3. The writers (Lizz & PJ of EMERGE) have taken an unknown, amorphous concept and developed it into the leading organizational management tool and process, Cultural Due Diligence (tm). This book explains the Cultural Due Diligence (tm) process, its importance to all business organizations and its implementation and review. Lizz & PJ of EMERGE are well-known for their seminars on Cultural Due Diligence(tm) and the book is a wonderful desk reference. It has also been picked up by several universities as required reading in business curriculum.



4. Having endured three acquisitions with one company, two down-sizings with another, being subjected to two subsequent layoffs with two companies, and forming my own consulting business, I found "Getting Your Shift Together" a very accurate outline of what is missed during critical times of change. It is refreshing in that it clearly identifies not only what is overlooked but also why we so often ignore what is squarely in front of us. While the book is actually a quick read, I read it slowly (some text repeatedly), often finding myself pondering its insightful truths. Getting an accurate picture of an organization's culture is critical to its longevity. Reading this book should be anyone's first step in gaining such a focus. The book gives the reader pause as it clearly shows how and why we hide from the truths that surround us. I reflected back to the line in "A Few Good Men" when Jack Nicholson says to Tom Cruise, "You can't handle the truth!" While truth may be hard to handle, in business we can't survive the lies and denial! Honesty rings through this book, moving the reader to examine his/her own world. What are the reigning values? Where is the trust? What's next? Take the Culture Health IndexTM and find out what your organization's culture really looks like. Be advised - this is not for the faint of heart, but it's also for anyone who still harbors any hope for surviving an upcoming change (and emerging as a leader) in his or her organization. "Getting Your Shift Together" is one of the best books I've read in a long, long time.

1 comments about 12 Secrets to Cashing Out: How to Sell Your Company for the Most Profit.

1. a rare book on the topic. useful for researc

1 comments about How to Value and Sell Your Business: The Essential Guide to Preparing, Valuing and Selling a Company for Maximum Profit.

1. Maximizing profit is the goal of all businesses because it is the peak of the point of it all: making money. "How to Value & Sell your Business: The essential guide to preparing, valuing and selling a company for maximum profit" is a guide to doing just that for the final time with a company. Even if it is far off, it outlines how to plan for the future to maximize your profit. Including instructions on identifying potential buyers, creating a solid exit strategy, managing your paid advisors, and surviving the lock in period. Practically written, "How to Value & Sell Your Business: The essential guide to preparing, valuing and selling a company for maximum profit" is highly recommended for business library collections everywhere.

No comments about Deciding to Sell Your Business: The Key to Wealth and Freedom.

5 comments about Done Deal: Your Guide to Merger and Acquisition Integration.

1. Book reads like a low end thesis paper that took 25 minutes to read, saying nothing more than pick an Integration leader, plan, and consider culture in integration. "5C Integration Model" and 'framework' go no further than what is covered in the 2 page Intro section, and although book is derived from a thesis work there is not a single case study or real life M&A corporate experience included.



2. I found this book to be an immediate boost to my consulting career. After reading it I was able to convey to my prospects and clients a substantial understanding of negotiating the turbulent waters of M&A. The book is filled with concise yet powerful tools that truly work. If you want to actually HELP your company or your clients instead of just understand them, use this book.



3. Concise, grounded, relevant and practical. Beth Page's research and 5-C model provide a framework that works in language that is easy to understand and explain. Over the past 18 months, my colleagues and I successfully applied the 5-C model with our VP clients. The model and supporting data provided a road map for both our contracting and consulting process. In the end, this uncomplicated book served as the foundation for the most significant and successful integration work in our organization's history.



4. Done Deal is an excellent, practical resource guide for organizations about to experience M & A. This book is an important reminder that people matter and it offers a way to move through the process with integrity.



5. This book is extremely basic . . . too basic to be useful as an integration guide. I cannot say I gained any new knowledge as a result of reading it.

5 comments about Winning at Mergers and Acquisitions : The Guide to Market Focused Planning and Integration.

1. Winning at Mergers is a brilliant book. It is not an ABC of M&A. As a former investment banker, I can see how it might turn off those consumed with completing transactions. Several chapters advise against doing deals that would undermine the success of the combined entity. That's a somewhat radical concept considering accountants and bankers have a singular objective in mind when faced with a corporate marriage. This book is ideal for graduate business courses. It takes the reader from the basic M&A 101 accounting-focused level to a broader and more business-focused level. That's what makes it stand out. It's more a book about successful business than number crunching. This book focuses on real-world challenges and operational factors to help a deal move from strategy through completion. It is divided into three parts: strategy; pre-deal (due diligence, etc.); and integration. The chapters on culture, organizational design and integration tactics make it worth the price of admission. No other book that I have read takes this approach. From the detail provided at every step of the way, the guidance seems tried, tested and improved upon. The book is also very well written. Interesting and filled with case studies and quotes that make the insights fresh. As another reviewer suggested, it is the perfect companion book to a dryer and more elementary book like Patrick Gaughin's. Without the insights of Clemente and Greenspan, one ventures into M&A with only a rudimentary understanding of what it truly takes to make a deal work and a company succeed. I recommend this book as a business tool and a reality check on whether one is even approaching transactions correctly.



2. This is a great book. Similar to Jemison's Managing Acquisitions, this is a book that provides extensive information on many strategic topics. The book is well-written, far from dry, yet really digs down deep. It departs from Jemison in its real-world application. The book details where other companies have gone wrong and where others have made the right decisions. It is a bit high level, so I don't think it would suffice as one's first introduction to business. But I was exposed to this book as a grad student at Vanderbilt and it has plugged me in more quickly to the world of organizational design, cultural analysis, and specific business strategies than I would have guessed. Real interesting book. I could see having it around for a long time to come.



3. The patented processes in this book helped my company get an actual return on our substantial investment by driving revenue and saving us millions. A roadmap for success,the book walks through all stages of the deal. It starts with the out-of-the-box "marketing due diligence" which honestly reveels the shortcomings of traditional due diligence. A jealous reviewer here calls it unrealistic, yet it's used by most of us in the Fortune 50 (he must have lost the contract to these guys) The writing is smooth and keeps your interest all the way and it gets quickly to the meat and potatoes focusing on revenue enhancement.(SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!) Anyone who's worked on a deal knows this is where the rubber meets the road. Even a fool can cut costs after a merger, but a failure of so many deals is not gerating revenue. The book using examples and case-studies explains how to fill what the author calls "the revenue enhancement opportunity pipeline." It virtually put money in our pocket!! Sheer genius. The middle sections of the book address combining products, services, customer bases, personnel decision-making criteria, management functions and proceses. The last 200 pages detail specific strategies and tactics for successful integration. Discussing the most commmon challenges, how to align corporate culture, employee and customer communication strategies, training and development, reward and recognition prohgrams,theres even a very comprehensive chapter on designing the new organizational structure. No book I have read on this subject speaks about so many important aspects and in such detail. The seven members of our management team each read this book over and over and used it as our gameplan constantly referring to it over the 8 months we worked on this deal. It was like having a consultant on staff! Our deal was a success BECAUSE of this book. Other companies, afraid to break with the traditional practices that only work half of the time, will be destined to repeat their failures. Heaven help their shareholders.



4. I just got this book as a gift. WOW!!!!!! It's very well written and the ideas are refreshing compared with the beancounter approach of all the accountant types who crush companies, cut the staff in half, and gut the core. We all know companies that have just thrown away the wrong people and slashed all their expenses (especially marketing) to make the numbers work so they can get their stock to budge or the consultants/Investment bankers to pocket their success fees. This book shows in a very sly way how corrupt the entire M&A world is. Show me a merger and I'll show you a greedy CEO or soul-less investment banker. This book provides helpful solutions to making the worst possible combinations work and pulls back the curtain on the scam of so many business analysts and beancounters who always claim"It's only business; it's not personal." Last time I heard that, I was fired.



5. Several years ago I was in a class at Cornell Law School that Drs. Clemente & Greenspan taught. Winning at M&A was a required text and their insights from working on several high profile deals were inspiring. Just a few years later, I am a successful in-house counsel to many recent acquisitions of a relatively high profile multi-national corporation. I have had the opportunity to share the finer lessons from Winning at M&A with our COO, director of Corporate Development, and our head of HR. Drs. Clemente & Greenspan have written an important book whose lessons seem to transcend time or circumstance. Just like Peter Drucker's management wisdom seems to apply to every company, economic environment, and business circumstance over the last 50 years, the work and guidance of Clemente & Greenspan in Winning at Mergers seems to be timeless and evolutionary. It allowed me as someone with little experience in the realm of consolidation and backwards integration to understand the ins and out of the process before I had ever sat in on a deal. This book should be read and kept by those who want to learn about business, marketing, or M&A.

5 comments about The Strongest Link: Forging a Profitable and Enduring Corporate Alliance.

1. This book is a must read for anyone who's involved in Strategic Alliance or seeking to learn more about it. It's very well written, well organized and most importantly it identifies key issues and addresses them with excruciating details. I would strongly recommend it to business managers, people responsible for strategic development and students.



2. his book is a must read for anyone who's involved in Strategic Alliance or seeking to learn more about it. It's very well written, well organized and most importantly it identifies key issues and addresses them with excruciating details. I would strongly recommend it to business managers, people responsible for strategic development, and students.



3. I have read most of the books on strategic alliances. The Strongest Link is the first book I have found that provides practical, insightful, and detailed help on just what I should do to plan, negotiate, and implement these relationships. It will be immediately useful to anyone from a CEO or other corporate executives to managers who have specific alliance responsibilities. Give a copy to everyone in your company who deals with alliances.



4. As a business Student who studied coporate alliances, and a corporate personel who has witnessed the planning and implementation of alliances, i believe "the strongest Link" deserves the highest ranking on the subject. This book is a MUST read for all CEOs and everyone in mangement, especially those who make decisions on alliances. This is an excellent book.



5. Most books on alliances give broad advice or a 50,000 foot view of the topic. This book is different. It provides practical tools. My team now uses the Alliance Framework and Alliance Implementation Program to create and manage our deals.

2 comments about How to Get Rich Buying Bankrupt Companies.

1. This book was exactly what I was looking for: learn about the bankruptcy process and the rules. The author is a bankruptcy lawyer and some parts can be detailed and difficult to read... the bankruptcy process is not simple. If you are trully interested in the bankruptcy process though, you will like the details.

   If you want to buy a small company one day and you are looking for a way to do it, this book is very helpful. I have a background in finance and management of small companies... so if you are unfamiliar with how the business world works, you might not appreciate this book. However, if you are like me, this book was GREAT!




2. This book was exactly what I was looking for: learn about the bankruptcy process and the rules. The author is a bankruptcy lawyer and some parts can be detailed and difficult to read... the bankruptcy process is not simple. If you are trully interested in the bankruptcy process though, you will like the details.

   If you want to buy a small company one day and you are looking for a way to do it, this book is very helpful. I have a background in finance and management of small companies... so if you are unfamiliar with how the business world works, you might not appreciate this book. However, if you are like me, this book was GREAT!

No comments about Creating Value from Mergers and Acquisitions: The Challenges.

1 comments about Mergers and Acquisitions: Managing Culture and Human Resources (Stanford Business Books).

1. This is a scholarly work that is probably the seminal piece on the value and importance of post merger cultural integration
   It is particularly useful as it reviews M&A's in the English and Non- English speaking world.Such as; Samsung(Korea),Seimens,(Germany),GlaxoSmithKline (USA and UK)or academics such as; IngarBjorkman Professorof Management Swedish School of Economics(Finland),Paul Evens Proffeessor Human Resources and Organisational Development INSEAD(France and Singapore).The Co-Editor Stahl is also from INSEAD.
   It confirms my own research on M&As which reveals that 80% of them fail to deliver the pre-merger promise and that 90% of the target company's people leave within 2 years of the event.
   It is presented in a unique fashion, each paper is reviewed by a subject matter expert.
   However the presentation could be enhanced if there was at the beginning of each paper or review a biography of the author/s
   so that their respective experiences could be guaged.
   
   Don't let this stop you from buying as it really worth while.
   
   Michael Minns Australia 61 2 98991564