HPA Senior Advisor Alex Nesbitt’s valuable insight on extension mergers continues. Read Part 2 here.

Many of you know of my deep admiration for all things Berkshire Hathaway, including for Chairman and CEO, Warren Buffett and Vice Chairman, Charlie Munger. Over the past several years, I’ve spent a likely unreasonable amount of time thinking about BRK and I’m profoundly committed to understanding how it makes so (so so) much money, and what might be next for them.

Extension mergers, often referred to as roll-ups, have historically been one of the most successful business growth models. Whether pursued to extend geography, markets, products, or some combination of these, such mergers focus primarily on revenue synergies. They have fueled impressive growth for companies like Cisco and IBM, who have used their extensive sales and distribution networks to, in turn, drive sales of products from hundreds of small acquisitions.

Simplifying and thereby becoming more strategic with your IT is a multi-year, enterprise-wide effort that incorporates standardization, optimization, automation, and, as appropriate, virtualization and cloud migration of an organization’s infrastructure, application, and business process layers. The goal is to boost performance efficiently while mitigating compliance and security risks, facilitating new strategic capabilities, and freeing up budget for more strategic spending.

Obtaining organizational buy-in for major transitions in any organization is a Herculean endeavor, but it can be achieved with a thoughtful approach that considers many factors, including change definition to bi-directional dialogue,  multi-faceted guiding coalitions and communications leads, and incentives. Before you take on the next major change effort, consider these elements.

As March Madness and Spring Training kick off, while the NBA and NHL close another season and the NFL begins drafting, and movie studios and exhibitors ramp up their games, it may be the time for old school diehards to cut the cord. As HPA’s resident guru on all things media and sports related, the team asked me to share my thoughts on these timely topics.

During an acquisition, the most effective and efficient way to ensure everything that needs to happen does is quite simple: a checklist. Or rather, in this case, two: a Take Control Checklist and an Integration Checklist.

There are many IT risks a business can and will face. Among them, cybersecurity incidents have the potential to severely diminish customer trust and destroy reputations, and can have profound effects within and outside an organization.

If you’re approaching an M&A activity, or you’ve already done your due diligence, read here for some behaviors you should be aware of–and avoid.

Learn about the importance of embracing and communicating change from the leadership level.