M&A People Integration · Change Strategy · Transformation Adoption

Deals are bought on models. They are delivered by people.

Hudson Change Advisory is a specialist change practice for acquirers, investors, and leadership teams in industries where the product touches people: beauty, consumer goods, pharma, and retail. We protect deal value by managing the workforce with the same precision a great brand uses to manage its customers.

The Signature Offering Begin a Conversation
$330M+ New Product Revenue Delivered
10 Industries Served
$5B+ Transaction Value Supported
500K+ Employees Across Clients
The Practice

A narrow practice, on purpose.

Generalist firms are built to say yes. We are built to be the call you make when the people side of a transformation is the part most likely to fail. That requires focus, so we work along three lenses and only three.

Lens 01 · Function

The functions that carry the change

Where operating models are rebuilt and where integration value is won or lost.

  • Operations & Supply Chain
  • HR & Organization
  • Finance
Lens 02 · Industry

Industries people experience

Categories where the product is felt by a consumer or a patient, so the change is felt by them too.

  • Beauty & Personal Care
  • Consumer Packaged Goods
  • Pharma & Life Sciences
  • Retail
Lens 03 · Moment

The moments that test an organization

Cross-functional problems where strategy is clear and adoption is not.

  • Mergers, acquisitions & carve-outs
  • Founder-led companies adopting new leadership
  • New ways of bringing products to market
  • Adoption of AI and enterprise technology
  • Agency, vendor & partner transitions

Outside these lines, we do not sell engagements. We will always offer a point of view, drawn from fifteen years inside these problems, and point you to the right specialist when it is not us.

Signature Offering · M&A People Integration

Treat employees like customers.

Acquirers know their consumers by segment, channel, and response. Most know their newly acquired workforce by org chart and headcount. That gap is where deal value leaks: key talent walks, adoption stalls, and synergies slip a quarter, then two. The HCA Integration CRM closes it. Every employee group inside the deal perimeter is profiled, engaged, and tracked like a customer segment, so leadership can see who has been reached, what they respond to, what they are rewarded for, and where resistance is forming, before it reaches the numbers.

Segment & criticality

Role, location, and reporting line, with key-talent and flight-risk flags tied to the synergy case.

Touchpoint history

Every intervention logged: who engaged, through which channel, and how many days since the last meaningful contact.

Response & sentiment

Pulse results, questions raised, and what landed versus what did not, read by segment rather than averaged away.

Pay & incentives

Compensation, bonus metrics, and retention agreements. What each group is actually rewarded to do, and whether it matches the new way of working.

Readiness stage

Each segment's position on the readiness model the program runs on, so the next intervention targets the real barrier.

Value linkage

Which synergies, systems, and milestones depend on which groups, turning people risk into deal risk the board can read.

Segment Record · Illustrative Elevated Risk
Regional Demand Planners
Acquired company · North America · 42 people · 9 key talent
ReadinessDesire: understands the change, not yet convinced ADKAR
Last touchpoint19 days ago · All-hands town hall
What they askBonus continuity; who owns the forecast after cutover
Paid to care aboutForecast accuracy bonus, 15% of base, measured on legacy system
Value at stakeInventory consolidation synergy, Q3
Next best actionSponsor-led small-group session within 5 days. Confirm bonus treatment in writing. Two retention conversations with flagged key talent.
Sample record for illustration. Built in the client's own CRM or HRIS environment.

Faster synergy capture

Interventions go where adoption is stuck, not where the calendar says.

Key talent retained

Flight risk is visible weeks before a resignation, while it is still cheap to act.

Culture measured, not guessed

Integration health reported by segment, alongside the financial plan.

A board-ready view of people risk

One source of truth linking workforce readiness to deal milestones.

Built on a 125-intervention M&A change strategy designed for newly acquired brands at a global prestige beauty group, and on integration work across a $2.2B acquisition where synergies were realized 35% faster. Applicable to any acquirer, in any of our sectors.

What We Do

Six services, one discipline

Each service is a different moment where a business asks its people to work differently. The discipline underneath is the same.

01

M&A People Integration

Day 1 readiness through the first year. Culture and operating model integration, key-talent retention, the Integration CRM, and a 100-day plan that holds the people workstream to the same standard as the financial one.

Day 1 Readiness Culture Integration Talent Retention 100-Day Plan
02

Change Strategy & Readiness

Structured change management drawing on Prosci, ADKAR, Kotter, and Bridges as the outcome requires: integrated stakeholder and change impact assessment, readiness baselines, sponsor roadmaps, and resistance management built around how people actually move through change.

Framework Agnostic Impact Assessment Sponsor Roadmaps Resistance Management
03

Change Communications

Narrative, cascade, and cadence. Messages sequenced by audience and owned by named leaders, manager toolkits delivered before team news, and feedback loops that turn employee questions into readiness data.

Change Narrative Executive Engagement Leader Cascades Manager Toolkits Feedback Loops
04

Leadership Transitions in Founder-Led Companies

When a founder hands the keys to a new CEO, COO, or investor-backed team, the organization has to learn a new way of deciding. We design governance, role clarity, and the onboarding of new leaders so momentum survives the handoff.

Governance Role Clarity Leader Onboarding
05

Launch & Go-to-Market Operating Models

New ways of bringing products to market, from stage-gate redesign to launch PMOs and integrated launch centers, including regulated categories. We design the model and the adoption plan together, so the new process is the one people actually use.

Stage Gates Launch PMO Regulated Launches RACI
06

AI & Technology Adoption

ERP, HR platforms, and AI tools fail on adoption far more often than on code. We build the readiness, role-based enablement and reinforcement, and adoption dashboards that turn a go-live into a return on the investment.

AI Readiness ERP & HRIS Training Architecture Adoption Dashboards
How We Work

Rigorous method. Human by design.

Fluent in Prosci, ADKAR, Kotter, Bridges, and Lewin. Loyal to none. Every program is different, so the outcome chooses the mix of frameworks, not the other way around. What stays constant is the rigor of the method and the judgment of someone who has run the operation on the other side of the table.

01

Diagnose

Integrated stakeholder and change impact assessment by role, and a readiness baseline for every segment. We start by listening: what each group stands to lose, not only what leadership hopes to gain.

02

Design

Framework selection, sponsor roadmap, communications and executive engagement plan, segment-level interventions, and incentive alignment. Every message gets an owner, an audience, a channel, and a way to hear back.

03

Deliver

A weekly operating cadence with an adoption dashboard. Touchpoints, sentiment, and adoption are tracked by segment, and interventions are redirected to wherever the barrier point actually sits.

04

Sustain

Role-based enablement and reinforcement through recognition, metrics, and pay, then capability transfer, so the organization runs its next change without us.

The Outcome Chooses the Framework

Individual adoption of a new system or process

Prosci ADKAR, with role-based enablement and reinforcement

Enterprise urgency and sponsorship

Kotter's 8 Steps, guiding coalition and sponsor roadmaps

Loss, identity, and culture in a deal or transition

Bridges' Transition Model, managing endings before beginnings

Structural and operating model change

Lewin's unfreeze, change, refreeze, paired with role and RACI redesign

Sustained behavior

Incentive alignment, metrics, and adoption dashboards

Prosci and ADKAR are registered trademarks of Prosci, Inc. Hudson Change Advisory is independent and not affiliated with any methodology provider.

Our Belief

Change is a human endeavor

"The technology is rarely the hardest part. The hardest part is getting people to believe the new way is worth the effort of letting go of the old one."

Empathy Is a Discipline

Empathy is not softness. It is the precision to understand someone's situation well enough to remove what is actually in their way: a workload spike, an unclear role, a bonus that rewards the old process.

Communication Is an Operating System

Messages are sequenced, owned, and measured like a supply chain. Managers hear first, questions are logged and answered, and silence is treated as a risk, not a pause.

Capability Transfer Is the Deliverable

We measure success by what an organization can do without us. Every engagement leaves a team that is better at change than it was before.

Selected Work

Where the work has been done

Client names are withheld by design. The scale is not.

M&A Integration · Prestige Beauty

Integration and 100-day plan for a $2.2B skincare acquisition

Led the integration plan across functions, including HR, for the acquirer's largest-ever deal, backed by a 125-intervention change strategy for newly acquired brands.

35% fasterSynergy realization
Operating Model · Consumer Durables

Learning architecture for a global appliance manufacturer's operating model change

Knowledge assessments and a role-based learning design so every associate understood how their job was changing, alongside a top-tier strategy firm.

78,000Associates
International Expansion · Retail

Change lead for a Fortune 50 retailer's international expansion

Stakeholder and impact analysis across 25 roles, with change and communications planned around time-sensitive launch activities.

300,000Associates in scope
Restructuring · Prestige Beauty

Change strategy for an enterprise restructuring

Managed the people side of a role reduction program at a global prestige beauty group, protecting continuity and engagement for those who stayed.

1,000+ rolesWithin a $200–300M annual benefit program
Vendor Transition · PE-Backed Beauty

From a board-level review to interim operations leadership

Brought in to lead a critical vendor transition for a luxury founder-led brand, then asked to lead operations until a permanent COO was in place.

$2.17MAnnual savings · +3 pts gross margin
AI Launch · Airline

Launch of a machine learning loyalty platform for a global airline

Strategy and customer success for an AI startup later acquired by a global strategy firm, from deployment methodology to adoption.

$70MSales lift
Perspectives

Points of view, not boilerplate

Short essays on the problems we work on. If one of them describes your situation, that is usually where the conversation starts.

M&A · People Integration

Your newest customers are on the payroll

Most acquirers can tell you, within a point, how consumers will react to a price change. Very few can tell you how the acquired company's planners, chemists, or store managers will react to a new bonus plan. One of those groups is the asset they just paid for.

Read moreClose

Marketing solved this problem decades ago. Segment the audience, map the journey, track every touchpoint, measure the response. Yet most integrations still communicate with one town hall, one FAQ, and a tracker that counts messages sent rather than minds changed.

The workforce inside a deal perimeter deserves the same rigor as a customer base: which segments carry the synergy case, how long since each was meaningfully engaged, what they have asked, and what they are actually paid to care about. When a bonus metric rewards the old way of working, no amount of messaging will produce the new one.

The result is not softer. It is faster. When leaders can see resistance forming in a specific team two weeks before it shows up as a missed milestone, they can act while acting is still cheap.

Michael Schiavone
Change Method · Empathy

ADKAR is a diagnostic, not a project plan

The Prosci ADKAR Model is the most widely used change framework in the world for good reason. The mistake is treating its five letters as five phases on a Gantt chart: awareness emails in week one, training in week four, done.

Read moreClose

People do not move in cohorts. In a single integration, a finance team can be stuck at Desire because its close calendar is about to double, while the commercial team next door has reached Ability and is asking for more. A plan that treats them identically wastes effort on one and loses the other.

Used well, ADKAR tells you segment by segment where the barrier point sits, and therefore which intervention will move it: a sponsor conversation rather than another training module, a clarified incentive rather than another newsletter.

That is where empathy becomes practical. It is not about being gentle. It is about being precise enough about someone's situation to remove what is actually in their way.

The same holds for every framework. Kotter is built for urgency, Bridges for loss, ADKAR for individual adoption. Real programs need more than one, chosen by the outcome, which is why we stay deliberately agnostic.

Michael Schiavone
Communications

The second announcement matters more than the first

Day 1 communications get enormous attention. Legal reviews every word and the press release lands on time. Then the organization goes quiet for six weeks, and the silence is filled by the most anxious person on every floor.

Read moreClose

Trust in an integration is won or lost in the second, third, and fourth messages: the ones that say what has been decided since Day 1, what has not, and when it will be. Employees forgive uncertainty. They do not forgive the sense that information is being held from them.

We treat communications as an operating cadence rather than a series of events. Every message has an owner, an audience segment, a channel, and a feedback loop. Managers receive talking points before their teams receive news.

Questions are logged, answered, and analyzed for patterns, because the questions people ask are the most honest readiness survey you will ever run.

Michael Schiavone
Why HCA

The specialist others call in.

Operator, Not Only Advisor

Accountable for outcomes inside the kinds of companies we now advise. The advice comes from having run the integration, the launch, and the restructuring, not from observing them.

Senior by Default

The person who scopes the work does the work. No leverage model and no handoff to a junior team after the pitch.

Built to Plug In

We work directly with acquirers and leadership teams, and as a specialist alongside larger consultancies that need deep people-integration expertise on a program.

Results, Measured

Adoption, key-talent retention, and time to synergy. Not the thickness of the deliverable.

The Transformation Ecosystem
Value
Creation
Strategy
People
Systems
Culture
The Principal

Fifteen years on both sides of transformation

Michael Schiavone, Founder and Principal of Hudson Change Advisory
Michael Schiavone
Founder & Principal

Michael has spent his career advising on transformation and then being accountable for it. He began at Accenture, rising to Senior Manager as a change architect for Fortune 50 retailers, global consumer and industrial companies, and regulated industries including pharma, nuclear energy, and aerospace and defense.

He led strategy and customer success at Formation.ai, later acquired by BCG, launching a machine learning loyalty platform for a global airline. At The Estée Lauder Companies he rose to Executive Director, leading M&A integration and change for DECIEM (The Ordinary), Dr.Jart+, and Too Faced, including the 100-day plan for the company's largest acquisition.

He went on to serve as VP Operations at Haus Labs by Lady Gaga and as interim head of operations at Victoria Beckham Beauty. Through HCA he advises acquirers, operating teams, and consultancies on the people side of change.

AccentureAnalyst to Senior Manager
Formation.aiStrategy Lead · acquired by BCG
Estée LauderDirector to Executive Director
Haus LabsVP Operations
HCAFounder & Principal

Outside the work: three-time member of the USA Cycling World Championship mountain bike team, published writer, and furniture builder. LinkedIn

Get in Touch

Every transformation begins with a conversation

HCA takes on a small number of engagements at a time, directly or as a specialist alongside larger firms. If you are planning a deal, a leadership transition, or a launch that depends on people working differently, start here.

mike@hudsonchange.com Connect on LinkedIn