If your business has just merged two teams — through an acquisition, a restructure, or a cost-saving consolidation — you already know the business case. What nobody prepares you for is how hard the people part is. Research from Ernst & Young and Harvard Business Review shows 70 to 90% of mergers and acquisitions fail or underperform, and cultural misalignment is one of the most cited reasons.

In this episode, Claire and Sarah draw on real M&A experience to cover what goes wrong when two teams with different cultures are pushed together, why HR is almost always brought in too late, what leaders promise that they can't deliver, and why something as small as a set of cups can undo months of goodwill.