Before hunting for acquisitions, the internal business owner (deal sponsor) must write a thesis answering "what problem are we solving?" This prevents reactive M&A driven by inbound opportunities and ensures strategic alignment from the start, separating the "why" from the "who."

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 maintain momentum, Cisco makes critical integration decisions—like site strategy or system consolidation—during diligence, not after close. These decisions are embedded into the final deal commitment materials, preventing post-close paralysis and emotional debates, allowing teams to execute immediately.

Cisco's model brings the integration lead in from the earliest phases to shape diligence strategy. This ensures the "how" of integration is validated early, preventing post-close surprises and accelerating value capture, a stark contrast to the traditional model where integration is a late-stage handover.

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.

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.

A separate Integration Management Office (IMO) creates a risky handoff. A better model for agile teams is for the Corp Dev professional who sourced and led the deal to pivot and own the integration plan post-close. This ensures the original deal thesis is carried through execution without loss of context.