We gathered an engaged top leader team at Grundfos to inaugurate the M&A Simulator at their headquarter. Present, to facilitate the first, exciting game round of corporate M&A with the Grundfos leaders, was Peter Zink Secher, author of the book The M&A Formula, and Leif Sørensen, CEO at Actee. We have had the pleasure of interviewing Andreas F. Brandt, Group Vice President at Grundfos Holding A/S, who was an engaged M&A Simulator player, about his experience with the game.

How did you find your experience during the session with the M&A Simulator? What did you enjoy most about it?

“Frankly - we would have loved to have been able to spend more time with the M&A Simulator. We know this will be useful when we undertake our next major M&A process and most likely we will revisit the M&A Simulator with relevant stakeholders in our organization.”
 

What did you (and your colleagues) learn from the course?
 

“A big takeaway for our team was being able to acknowledge that M&A is much more than due diligence and corporate procedures. The M&A Simulator helped us to put a real focus on the human element of the M&A process. Carrying out the exercises let our leadership team acquire a deeper understanding of the many factors that impact the M&A process with a special focus on Post Merger Integration.
 
Framing this as a game made it accessible and engaging. In addition, we have already implemented certain anchoring of our M&A efforts in our strategy. In my opinion, it was extremely helpful to learn how to successfully combine our strategic value drivers on ‘why we do M&A’ elements with management and leadership tools.”
 

Did the M&A simulator help the various ‘disciplines’ within your company (EG: Finance, Legal, IT etc.) better understand the common ‘why M&A?’ goal and how to work together to accomplish it?

 
“Yes. The simulator made it clear that M&A is a multi-functional discipline. To win the game, you have to involve the whole organization, including, the business owners and our group functions such as communication, HR, and IT) alongside the more ‘traditional M&A’ groups such as Finance, Legal and M&A. It was clear that each department has its own role to play in the process and none should be overlooked.”

 
Did you find engaging with the M&A Simulator game useful?

 
“Definitely. The gamification of the M&A process helped engage the leadership team and in my opinion, helped the learning experience. Understanding the elements of what made one team successful and let others trail slightly made for a good learning experience. We look forward to using this tool again."

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