While M&A as a lever to drive growth, innovation, and transformation is more vital than ever, most companies struggle to use M&A effectively. Leaders often attribute this struggle to the difficulties of executing or integrating M&A, but we believe that the root cause is more fundamental: a failure to link M&A to a strategy for the future growth and leadership.

Strategic planning in most large organizations has a very short-term focus; often simply an annual budgeting exercise or to add some revenue to meet market or investor expectations. Organizations must instead focus on strategic vision to design M&A programs that will (a) continuously drive growth, innovation, and leadership, and (b) be executed well to derive the expected synergies and value.

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