Director, Mergers & Acquisitions Integration Lead and Strategy & Operations

Our Merger and Acquisition Venture Success (MAVS) Integration Management (IM) team is responsible for driving the due diligence and integration/divestiture phases of the deal lifecycle.  The IM team also serves in an overarching leadership capacity, establishing a vision, aligning Practice priorities, advancing capabilities, and providing support to the broader set of MAVS functional teams.  As part of the IM team, Integration Leads drive cross-functional deal teams, often across several simultaneous transactions, through preliminary and confirmatory due diligence, deal approval stage gates, close day execution, and integration strategy, planning and execution.  The Integration Lead must partner closely and develop trusted relationships with Microsoft’s Corporate Development team, the Deal Lead and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) from the sponsoring business and engineering groups (e.g. Cloud, Gaming, Devices, etc.), target company Chief Level Executives (CXOs), and MAVS functional leads across the Practice to ensure transactions are smoothly executed. 

This Integration Lead will also serve as the Strategy & Operations (S&O) Team Director (and therefore will allocate less time to deal delivery than other Integration Leads).  A core group within the Integration Management team, S&O is focused on providing project management support to deal teams, leading post-close deal metrics reporting, and advancing MAVS process and tool capabilities.  The S&O Team Director is a highly visible and influential role in guiding the S&O team, communicating to top Microsoft executives, and shaping MAVS work to ensure acquisition success. 

Responsibilities

People Management:

• Own performance management; provide real-time and semi-annual feedback and coaching to support learning and growth 
• Develop talent; manage team workload and assignments, balancing practice needs with individual capabilities and interest in stretch roles 
• Lead recruiting; drive hiring effort as we expand the team 

Practice Strategy & Operations 

• Oversee MAVS Practice Rhythm of Business (RoB), including quarterly MAVS Summits, monthly Lunch & Learns, weekly MAVS Connect calls, etc. 
• Oversee internal process and tool development, analytics and reporting; support vendor engagement and PO/invoicing processes  
• Prioritize and drive cross-functional projects focused on improving MAVS diligence and integration capabilities, as well as ad-hoc projects as requested by leadership 

Strategic Thought-Leadership & Execution:

• Focuses on preserving and creating value from Microsoft’s transactions 
• Understands and operationalizes the business strategy 
• Leads confirmatory due diligence, integration and separation planning, execution and performance tracking 
• Mobilizes and leads virtual teams and manages to schedule and deliverables 
• Translates business requirements into an integration/separation plan 
• Assesses the impact of the integration/separation on the business and leads design and execution of plans to preserve and create value 
• Creates highly effective partnerships, including regular clarification of roles and responsibilities, across teams 
• Drives urgency to deliver on key milestones and deliverables 
• Identifies and clarifies issues, risks, and opportunities, and escalates as appropriate 
• Shares best practices and experiences from prior transactions from across the enterprise 
• Facilitates connections and resolves cross-functional issues and prioritization 
• Monitors progress against goals/facilitates reviews 
• Ensures communication plans are in place 
• Documents deal learnings and drives practice improvement based on these learnings 

Strategic Working Relationships: 

• Business leaders (Sales and Engineering Group Vice Presidents and General Managers) Strategy and business development teams,Corporate teams (Corporate Development, Tax), MAVS practice leaders and teams Finance leadership 

M&A Deal Work: Integration