Image provided by Sias van Schalkwyk, South Africa
If you’ve ever belonged to a company that’s been taken over through a merger or acquisition by another company, rest assured, your original Executive will change camps.
Companies typically buy other companies for how the product leverages its portfolio or market share, not because it’s filled with rocking collaborators.
I have yet to see a merger or acquisition result in anything less than a collision of cultures.
The difference in the success or failure after the purchase or merging of these cultures can be described in how the collision takes place. It can be anywhere from a bump of the shoulders and eventual turn toward the same goal to a total a write-off like a car left in a twisted wreck.
The change-management of such a significant alteration in the ‘flow’ of an organization takes time and effort, and it begins at the CEO level. Acceptance of good decisions in the purchase or merger with another company almost always is adopted by the executive first. Let’s face the fact, it behoves them to do so. The higher in the organization you are, the more you must adopt the direction set forth before you if you are to remain and still play nice in the sandbox and reach success.
If little or no change-management or clarity of direction is offered the employees, they’ll feel like they’ve been betrayed as they witness their executive ‘going over’ to the other side.
People like their current work-flow (good or bad) and significant change shakes up the apple cart – this requires guidance and leadership. Guidance begins, (and must be followed through), at the CEO level. The CEO who rolls up the sleeves, gets involved in the change-management and helps the organization evolve is better equipped to retain its best talent, industry expertise and product knowledge.
Choose to leave it to others, and those others will follow your lead, leaving it to others all the way down the chain until the mass exodus out the door begins at the front line levels and works its way back up. What are you risking by ignoring the obvious?
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