Making the Deal Real: How GE Capital Integrates Acquisitions

The work starts well before the ink is dry.

by

and

Suzanne Francis

by

and

Suzanne Francis

From the Magazine (January–February 1998)

Like the process by which a child learns to walk, most business innovations emerge from dozens of trial-and-error experiments; from seemingly random actions that eventually form a pattern; from hundreds of small, almost imperceptible adjustments that eventually result in a solid step forward. This has been true for developments ranging from lean manufacturing to concurrent product development to business process reengineering—all now well-accepted innovations that emerged from dozens of experiments until they crystallized to form a methodology others could follow.

A version of this article appeared in the January–February 1998 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Ron Ashkenas is a coauthor of the Harvard Business Review Leader’s Handbook and a Partner Emeritus at Schaffer Consulting. His previous books include The Boundaryless Organization, The GE Work-Out, and Simply Effective.
LD

Lawrence J. DeMonaco has been a human resources executive with GE for 20 years. For the past 4 years, he has been a senior vice president of human resources for GE Capital, responsible for HR activities outside the United States.
SF

Suzanne Francis are senior partners at Schaffer Consulting, based in Stamford, Connecticut. Ashkenas is the author of Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done (Harvard Business Review Press, 2010). He and Francis are the coauthors of two previous HBR articles on acquisition integration.

Making the Deal Real: How GE Capital Integrates Acquisitions

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