To prevent acquisitions from becoming orphaned "CorpDev deals," F5's process requires a senior product manager and a sales leader to co-sponsor every transaction. This ensures operational ownership. The product lead owns roadmap integration, and the sales lead signs up for the revenue target, making the business case tangible.

Combining strategy, M&A, and integration under a single leader provides a full lifecycle, enterprise-wide view. This structure breaks down silos and creates a "closed-loop system" where post-deal integration performance and lessons learned directly feed back into future strategy and deal theses, refining success metrics beyond financials.

Cisco moved from a dysfunctional "throw it over the wall" M&A model to an integrated one. The key change was implementing quarterly reviews where the integration team reports back to the original deal team on progress and synergy attainment. This forces dealmakers to learn from the downstream consequences of their strategies.

To avoid a broken handoff, embed key business and integration experts into the core deal team from the start. These members view diligence through an integration lens, validating synergy assumptions and timelines in real-time. This prevents post-signing surprises and ensures the deal model is operationally achievable, creating a seamless transition from deal-making to execution.

Many M&A teams focus solely on closing the deal, a critical execution task. The best acquirers succeed by designing a parallel process where integration planning and value creation strategies are developed simultaneously with due diligence, ensuring post-close success.

Don't surprise an acquired company with an integration plan on day one. Snowflake turns diligence into a collaborative process post-term sheet. They work with the target's leadership to jointly build the integration thesis, define milestones, and agree on charters, ensuring buy-in and alignment before the deal is even signed.

The biggest risk after closing a deal is losing momentum. To ensure success, Snowflake assigns a 'Directly Responsible Individual' (DRI) for integration. This person leads reviews at 30, 60, 90, and 180 days post-close to hold everyone accountable to the integration plan and original thesis.

Deals fail post-close when teams confuse systems integration (IT, HR processes) with value creation (hitting business case targets). The integration plan must be explicitly driven by the value creation thesis—like hiring 10 reps to drive cross-sell—not a generic checklist.

Framing M&A like a marriage, rather than a transaction, fosters a long-term perspective. Sourcing is dating to find value alignment, the Letter of Intent is the engagement, and post-close integration is the marriage itself—the phase where the real, hard work of building a successful union begins.