A Synergy Needs an Owner

Years ago, I led the acquisition of a large business and found potential synergies that would increase EBITDA by more than 50%.

I was very proud of myself.

The logic seemed sound. Eliminate owner-related expenses. Consolidate overlapping roles through shared services. Use our combined scale to negotiate better vendor pricing.

Then, somewhere in the sprint to close, I asked a naive question:

Who is actually going to own this after close?

The answer was HR.

That turned out to be a bad choice—but not because HR did bad work. They ran their playbook. Payroll and benefits were migrated. Obvious redundancies were addressed. The people assigned to the integration completed the responsibilities we had given them.

What they did not own was the synergy target.

They hadn’t built it, weren’t staffed to pursue it across functions, and didn’t control every decision required to deliver it. We had confused supporting the integration with owning the economic outcome.

A model can identify a synergy. It cannot deliver one. If the person accountable after close didn’t help create the target, control the necessary decisions, and track the leading indicators, the number is closer to hope than plan.

With longer PE hold periods and strategic buyers paying full prices, operational improvement is being asked to carry more of the return.

Before close, every synergy line should have a name beside it.

Who owns operational improvement in your deals once the deal team moves on?