Unlocking M&A Value: Harnessing Workforce Habits for Turnaround Success

Justin Pethick, Senior Vice President of Strategy & Business Development, POWERS

Mergers and acquisitions promise transformative growth, but too many deals falter when underperforming companies fail to deliver post-close. The culprit isn’t always strategy or synergies, it’s the ingrained habits of the acquired workforce.

From shop floor routines to leadership behaviors, these habits can either propel or derail your integration efforts.

Uncovering productive and counterproductive habits early, within the first 100 days, lays the foundation for unified standard operating procedures (SOPs) and processes that turn around struggling acquisitions. For manufacturing leaders, this is the key to unlocking deal value and driving sustainable performance.

The Hidden Power of Workforce Habits

When you acquire or merge with a company, you inherit its habits, the automatic behaviors that define how work gets done. Productive habits, like a maintenance team’s rigorous pre-shift checks, can boost output and quality. Counterproductive ones, like operators bypassing quality controls to hit quotas, bleed margins, and morale. These habits, often invisible to outsiders, shape the success of your integration.

Left unaddressed, they can sink even the best-laid plans, with studies showing that up to 90% of M&As fail to meet financial expectations due to integration missteps.

Consider a recent case: a manufacturer acquired a rival to expand capacity, only to find operators habitually skipping machine calibrations, causing a 10% defect rate. Another deal saw a leadership team’s habit of siloed decision-making delay production by 15% daily. These weren’t strategic failures, they were habit-driven drags. By identifying and documenting these behaviors early, you can build SOPs that amplify strengths and eliminate weaknesses, setting the stage for a turnaround.

Why Early Habit Audits Matter

Post-acquisition, the clock is ticking. The first 100 days are critical for setting the tone of integration, yet many leaders focus on financials or systems, overlooking workforce habits. This oversight can be a huge mistake. Habits are the DNA of an operation, how teams execute tasks, share information, and solve problems. Ignoring them risks perpetuating inefficiencies or alienating talent, with research indicating that 82% of value-destroying M&As lose over 10% of employees due to poor integration.

Productive habits, like a team’s knack for cross-line communication, can be scaled to unify processes across the merged entity. Counterproductive habits, like over-reliance on manual workarounds, must be rooted out before they embed further.

A swift habit audit reveals these dynamics, giving you a roadmap to align SOPs with your strategic goals.

One post-merger plant documented a habit of shared downtime logs, leveraging it into a unified SOP that cut changeover times by 20%. Another found a counterproductive habit of ad-hoc repairs, replacing it with a standardized maintenance process that lifted OEE by 12%.

A Blueprint for Habit-Driven Turnaround

Turning around an underperforming acquisition starts with habits. Here’s how to act fast and effectively:

1Audit Habits in the First 100 Days

Deploy cross-functional teams to observe and document workforce routines. Shadow operators, maintenance crews, and supervisors to identify patterns, e.g., how they handle changeovers, log issues, or coordinate. One manufacturer uncovered a productive habit of daily operator briefings, which became the backbone of a unified SOP.

2Classify Productive vs. Counterproductive

Map habits against performance metrics. Productive habits, like proactive quality checks, drive throughput and should be standardized. Counterproductive ones, like bypassing safety protocols, breed inefficiency and must be phased out. Aligning what works with performance goals and shedding what doesn’t guides your integration priorities.

3Build Unified SOPs Around Strengths

Use productive habits as the foundation for new processes. If the acquired team excels at real-time issue reporting, integrate that into a company-wide SOP. Standardize tools and training to ensure consistency, avoiding the “us vs. them” divide that tanks 60% of integrations.

4Engage Leadership to Drive Change

Train leaders to model new habits and hold teams accountable. A plant that replaced siloed maintenance schedules with collaborative ones saw a 15% uptime boost because supervisors championed the shift.

The Payoff: A Stronger, Unified Operation

Uncovering and leveraging habits transforms an underperforming acquisition into a competitive asset. By building SOPs around productive behaviors, you align teams, streamline processes, and capture synergies faster. One manufacturer turned around a struggling acquisition by standardizing a productive habit of cross-shift huddles, boosting throughput by 18%. Another eliminated a counterproductive habit of inconsistent quality checks, cutting scrap by 25%. These wins don’t just save costs, they rebuild trust and momentum across the workforce.

The alternative, ignoring habits, risks prolonged losses and disengagement. Your deal’s value depends on how quickly you align the workforce to a unified vision.

t POWERS, our decades-long track record in manufacturing productivity shows that early habit audits, supported by tools like DPS, our Digital Production System, accelerate turnarounds.

. Start now: observe one team’s routines this week. Which habit will you harness to unlock your deal’s potential?

About POWERS

At POWERS, we help unlock M&A value fast and build it for the long term. Our team digs into operations, processes, workforce habits, supply chains, and maintenance to drive efficiency and accountability. We deliver results: higher output, lower costs, and teams aligned to your vision.

DPS, our Digital Production System takes it further, giving you real-time visibility into KPIs and execution, so gains stick. Want to maximize your next deal? Let’s talk.