Culture concerns are the most pressing issue for companies weathering mergers or acquisitions, experts say.

There’s a story about a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls. It’s also the story of a man named Brady, who was busy with three boys of his own. You’ve probably heard it before.

It’s not the most elegantly told story, but it does demonstrate an essential truth about the business world that could potentially mean a lot to any company. That truth is that when it comes to mergers and acquisitions, it takes more than simply moving everyone under one roof to make them all get along. M&A experts agree that executives need to approach mergers and acquisitions with a great deal of care throughout the process, and that mergers are as much about blending cultures as they are about merging operations.

Meet Your New Family
Stacey Conti, CEO and co-founder of consulting firm Merger Managers, says executives need to understand the importance of culture during a merger or acquisition and plan ahead accordingly. “Culture will never kill a deal or be forced, but it can kill value that you get out of that deal if your team doesn’t understand the cultural differences and figure out a realistic way to address it,” she says.

Understanding both cultures in advance can make the transition to a single culture much easier, even if they’re wildly different. “When you’re assessing other companies, you have to have an understanding of your own culture to know if it would be a good fit,” Conti says. Addressing culture with employees from the beginning of the process can be done through formal or informal techniques. She recalls a client who addressed the issue through a skit featuring a representative from the company with a more traditional culture wearing a suit and tie and another from the company with a laid-back culture dressed in casual clothes.

Who Do You Trust?
Developing and encouraging trust through the early stages of a merger is important to help the surviving employees buy into the changes. Conti says investing in training and integration is one of the most important things an executive can do, because it shows that he or she is not just there for the hunt, but also for the “cleaning and cooking, the messy stuff.”

Paul Weber, general manager of Oregon-based firm Pacific Management Institute, says avoiding a “winners and losers” attitude during an acquisition also goes a long way to preserving employee trust. “I think the route that’s taken sometimes is to say that the ‘winner’ defines the culture,” he says. Employees from the acquired company need to be reassured that the acquiring company “didn’t bring anyone here because they are a loser,” Weber says.

Family Meeting
The handling of the initial announcement that a merger or acquisition is coming can be critical to the successful blending of cultures, Conti says, as the attitude employees take into the process sometimes makes all the difference. She says executives should fully understand the legal issues of materiality and disclosure, then “push those boundaries to the limit.” Obviously, there are legal limits to how much information an executive can give his or her team before the deal is final, but Conti says the more information managers and executives have before the general announcement, the better.

Executives should start by pre-briefing the management team and “thought leaders” just before the general announcement. Conti describes thought leaders as the “water-cooler leaders” of the company who many employees turn to for guidance and cues. Bringing those people on board first can create a ripple effect of positive attitudes that will soon spread to the rest of the company following the general announcement, she says. Conti says executives should aim to resolve issues all the way down to “Coke or Pepsi in the fridge?”

A Big Brother or Sister
An integration leader should be appointed, as well. This is someone in a senior position who can look at the company cross-functionally. Conti says trusting the business unit with integration saps its energy from what it should be focused on – being profitable. “You want your business leaders focused on creating new revenue and working toward the new company vision,” she says. “You want an integration leader to work in partnership with that business leader to lead the cumbersome, but necessary, integration and make the sometimes unpopular long-term decisions necessary to optimize the deal value.”

One thing Weber says integration leaders should avoid is the attitude that one side of the merger or acquisition will become a carbon-copy of the other. Like many marriages, often one side will enter a merger expecting to make the other side abandon all of its culture and practices. “One person thinks they’re going to change the other,” Weber says.

‘The Jan Factor’
The example of the Brady family also provides a look at something that could have a devastating effect on the merger – the unhappy child. Just as one kid can disrupt the family dynamic by going overboard for attention or excessively complaining, employees who aren’t fully participating in the merger or even actively sabotaging it can make for a bumpy ride. The key difference is that those employees won’t simply be wearing ridiculous wigs or inventing imaginary boyfriends.

Conti suggests that managers keep an “at-risk” list of employees who are likely to be grumbling about the merger or dragging their feet. Tying compensation to meeting goals for integration is a simple but effective way to alleviate most problem employees’ issues. “Nothing talks better than money,” she says. “Tie the new objectives and priorities to compensation or retention bonuses so that it is clear where you want the priorities of the organization to be.”

In cases where a manager is the one holding back integration, Conti says it’s often due to deflated egos or political positioning. Replacing or commingling management from both companies is usually effective in those situations, but “sometimes the best answer may be to eliminate that employee or manager,” she says.

However, Weber warns not to be too quick on the draw to fire a troublesome employee. Sometimes, he says, those employees are grumbling because they see some legitimate problems with the merger. “Most people sabotaging things are either afraid of something they’re going to lose or they’re really more altruistic than that, and they see things that aren’t being addressed and they don’t have enough experience to address that,” he says.

Weber suggests putting some troublesome employees right in the middle of the integration process by making them part of an integration team represented by both sides. Sometimes surrounding negative people with positive people is enough to bring them around. Firing complaining employees without at least listening to their concerns sends a bad message to the rest of the company, Weber says, and squelches others from speaking up in the future.

A Tough Job
Merging two disparate company cultures can be one of the most difficult things an executive can do. However, meticulous planning and understanding can lead to a new, invigorated company where all employees share in the common vision and goals. It might even be easier than getting three girls and three boys to share one bathroom.