Consolidation looks like the obvious play in a shrinking industry space: put two friendly competitors together, eliminate redundant / duplicative activities, pocket the savings and move along happily.  Sounds simple and neat.  Uh oh.

Newsflash:  M&A isn't easy to do really well. It's tough. And it demands tough-minded and clear-thinking preparation that goes well beyond routine "due diligence."  Due diligence is usually insufficient -- it uses old data to understand and describe a situation that will not be relevant to the marketplace in the immediate future.  What’s missing is the hard work of assessing the future and how the business will compete after the deal is done.

While the investment bankers, accountants, and attorneys can get the deal mechanics done, the much harder stuff is all strategic and anything but mechanical.  That's because it isn't merely about doing the deal itself.  Rather, it is the process of making a single enterprise out of two separate ones so that the resulting enterprise has a durable competitive advantage.  In other words, the hard stuff is what gives you confidence that the expectations for future performance are reasonable and attainable.