Introduction
Richard Andersen: For our audience, I want to let you know that we’re joined today by Pete Stack. Pete is a seasoned professional in the M&A ecosystem who has led enterprise PMOs and managed IT M&A programs across healthcare, consumer goods, and consulting—integrating billions of dollars in transactions.
Today’s discussion is intentionally less about theory and more about what actually works when deals move from paper to execution. Pete, before we dive in, is there anything from your background that would be helpful context for our audience?
Pete Stack: Over the past 15 years, my work has focused on two areas, sometimes simultaneously. First, post-close M&A integration—primarily on the buy side, with some exposure to diligence but mostly after close. Second, helping organizations build or optimize project and program management offices, both on the IT side and the business side.
Where Deals Break Down After Close
Richard Andersen: Many deals look great on paper but fail in execution. From your vantage point, where do deals most often break down after the LOI is signed?
Pete Stack: From a post-close lens, it’s often not a failure of execution as much as a failure to address culture. Parent companies and acquisitions frequently have very different cultures, yet integration efforts tend to focus on the mechanics—finance, legal, HR—without seriously assessing cultural fit.
When culture isn’t addressed, resistance builds. Progress slows. People are still doing the work, but momentum erodes.
Data: The Lifeblood and the Bottleneck
Richard Andersen: Beyond culture, are there process or information challenges that weigh heavily on outcomes?
Pete Stack: Data is a huge one—especially in healthcare. You’re talking about patient records, transactional data, insurance data—often hundreds of millions of records. Normalizing that data so it can flow into a parent company’s data warehouse can take months.
Sending data isn’t hard. Ingesting it, validating it, normalizing it—that’s the hard part. And until that’s done, other integration workstreams slow down.
Richard Andersen: And if the data doesn’t become accretive to the deal, you’ve arguably created a new problem rather than solved one.
Pete Stack: Exactly.
Fatigue as an Early Warning Signal
Richard Andersen: Are there early warning signs that help you spot trouble before it becomes visible in outcomes?
Pete Stack: Fatigue. Acquired teams often go through months—or years—of diligence. Then immediately after close, they’re thrown into integration, while still being expected to “keep the lights on.”
We learned to implement regular check-ins with acquisition leadership—not about tasks, but about how people were feeling. Sometimes the right move was to pause a workstream because the business simply couldn’t absorb more change at that moment.
That made a significant difference.
What an M&A-Ready PMO Looks Like
Richard Andersen: You’ve built PMOs inside organizations that acquire repeatedly. What does an M&A-ready PMO look like before the first deal closes?
Pete Stack: At the tactical level, it’s no different than strong project management fundamentals—plans, RAID logs, reporting. What’s different is scale and repeatability.
Excel and standalone tools don’t scale. Once you’re managing 20–30 concurrent projects, you need an enterprise PMO platform with a shared data model so leadership can see the portfolio as a whole.
And you need to bring a cultural lens into how the PMO operates—not just schedules and milestones.
Why Integration Playbooks Matter
Richard Andersen: How important are integration playbooks?
Pete Stack: They’re critical. A playbook isn’t just templates—it’s the narrative. It explains the process, the sequencing, and the realities of what acquisitions have already been through.
They’re especially important because companies often have to onboard contract project managers quickly. A good playbook acts like a user manual for M&A integration.
And it reinforces a core principle: the acquired company must keep operating. That always comes first.
The First 90 Days After Close
Richard Andersen: In the first 90 days post-close, what capabilities matter most?
Pete Stack: Three stand out:
- Human Capital – Converting employees, benefits, and HR systems. Uplifting benefits can be expensive, but it’s a powerful retention tool.
- Finance – Getting financials flowing accurately and consistently.
- IT Security – Network visibility, endpoint management, and remediation.
We’ve seen cases where acquired companies were breached because they remained disconnected too long. That risk is existential.
Facilities management is another sleeper issue—especially in healthcare, where you might inherit thousands of physical locations.
Why IT Integration Is Often Underestimated
Richard Andersen: IT integration often feels underestimated during deal planning. Why?
Pete Stack: Because it’s expensive, complex, and risky.
Historically, many integrations relied on “rip and replace”—networks, devices, hardware. That’s painful to inventory and costly to execute. Data centers were often deferred decisions because of the price tag.
Cloud and SaaS have helped, but they don’t eliminate complexity. You still have to access, extract, and normalize data. And if you defer integration too long, you reduce your ability to contain breaches if something goes wrong.
Systems That Are Hardest to Integrate
Richard Andersen: Are there systems that consistently cause trouble?
Pete Stack: ERP systems are notoriously difficult—especially when versions don’t align. EMR/EHR systems in healthcare are another major challenge. Epic versus Allscripts is night and day.
Beyond systems, identity resolution is a massive issue. Is “Pete Stack” the same as “Peter Stack”? Multiply that by customers, vendors, employees, and transactions—it’s a serious data governance challenge.
Governance, Transparency, and Decision Velocity
Richard Andersen: How do you drive transparency and decision-making during integration?
Pete Stack: Weekly working sessions with project teams. Bi-weekly leadership meetings early on, tapering to monthly after the first year.
I prefer electronic dashboards delivered from a PMO platform like Smartsheet. Leadership still loves PowerPoint, though—so I ask them what they actually look for and design around that.
Governance is critical. Decision rights must be clear, and fewer decision-makers are better. Six is far better than twelve.
Estimation: The Hard Truth About Data Work
Richard Andersen: Are there questions executives ask that are particularly hard to answer?
Pete Stack: “How long will data normalization take?”
The honest answer is: I’ll know a lot more once we’re halfway through. Volume and complexity make early estimates unreliable. You can reference past integrations, but they only get you so far.
Credibility comes from being honest about uncertainty.
Lessons Learned: Advice to a Younger Self
Richard Andersen: If you could advise your younger self on your first integration, what would you say?
Pete Stack: Use culture as a force for change.
I was part of an acquired company early in my career, and I saw how easily people can be made to feel “less than.” I always ask team members if they’ve ever been acquired. If not, I ask them to work through the project from that perspective.
People fear losing their jobs. Even when layoffs don’t happen, that fear is real. Integration success is as much about humanity as execution.
Looking Ahead: The Role of AI
Richard Andersen: Looking five years out, how do you see AI changing integration?
Pete Stack: AI has enormous potential in due diligence and data analysis. I’ve seen deals with 100,000 documents. No human can meaningfully analyze that volume.
AI could surface risks, opportunities, and gaps far more effectively. I don’t see it replacing program management anytime soon, but as a force multiplier—especially in diligence—it’s incredibly promising.
Closing
Richard Andersen: Pete, this has been an insightful and deeply practical discussion. Thank you for sharing what really happens day in and day out in integration work.
Pete Stack: Thank you. I appreciate the conversation.