Merger activity is at a fever pace this year, on pace to hit new record levels. But are many of these deals doomed to fail, driven more by fear than coherent strategy? Overcoming market pressures to pursue M&A activities that are both strategic and successful in driving business results takes more than simple due diligence. You need to understand the pitfalls along the path, have a strategy for success and a playbook that helps to guide the process.

A recent chat with my colleagues about our kids turned into a great lesson about building resonant brands. I’d mentioned my daughter’s recent obsession with everything Ivivva – the Lululemon spinoff brand for tween girls – and one of the folks around the table suggested the company must be losing out on a lot of brand equity by going with the “Ivivva” brand, instead of calling itself “LuluKids.”

As anyone who has worked to build and expand a business knows all too well, growth is hard. Expanding your offering in existing markets rubs elbows with the competition and can erode differentiation, leading many companies to turn their sights overseas. But branching out into new regions has become more complex than ever.

Most of us wouldn’t think of Walmart as a premiere shopping destination for ethnic foods, but walk through one of the company’s supercenters in certain neighborhoods today and you might be surprised. Mangoes and papaya are stocked next to Chinese eggplant, and the next aisle over might feature imported foods from South America – all carefully curated to appeal to growing local Hispanic and Asian populations.

The recent scandal over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email address and host server for all of her email correspondence while serving as Secretary of State certainly provided fodder for political pundits. But the scandal also highlights an important strategic issue for organizations – the rise of consumer-friendly cloud technologies that have the ability to make work more efficient, but exist outside the control of corporate IT departments.

On your last major in-store shopping outing, how often did you pull out your phone? Did an earlier email or online search lead you there? If you’re like the vast majority of shoppers, you probably tapped into digital channels before and/or during your shopping experience. Today there is no one, predictable path for consumers’ interaction with a brand.