In our opinion, companies joining forces need a high level vision of this end state before agreeing to a deal. That way decisions about how to put functions and units together can be weighed against the desired end state. However, executives need not have
an intricate or fully worked out cultural end state from the get-go. To the contrary, combination partners learn a lot about each other and their cultures only after they work together and the two sides get to know one other. Figure 2 shows a grid we have developed of different organizational and cultural end states that can help executives to think through their options and clarify their intentions for the combined organization: