1-Focus International has made a commitment to helping organizations, teams and multi-nationals successfully (with fun) go through the merging process in a rapid and fluid process. Through our research and experience, Sandy and Roberta developed our own Model of Merger Readiness™ (See the model and our joint white paper below).  We believe, that despite the high failure rate, this is not impossible. Rather it is relatively easy when employees are engaged in the process immediately. There are five critical issues that must be addressed simultaneously for this to happen:

Leading Cross Cultural Re-engagement – Creating Post Merger Identity

By Sandy Weiner, MEd with Roberta Hill, MBA

For a full description of the issues and process in creating merger excellence, please request a copy of the full article on [the human dimension of] mergers & acquisitions send a email to mergers@aweber.com

Executive Summary:

Mergers and Acquisitions often create winners and losers at both the corporate level and for individual staff. One culture unseats another. One employee outweighs another. Power struggles prevail. While policy and organizational decisions are made from above, the organization waits… It sits in limbo and disengages from its focus. Engaging across corporate cultures could be a near-fluid process of creating meaningful, value-driven focus and corporate loyalty from the onset.

In this white paper, we review the necessary steps to move through these challenges as well as highlight the three critical issues that are faced by the executive team right from the beginning: identity, duality and leading a top down – bottom up focus. A discordant or lax employee integration process can devalue the new company and its ability to perform and gain intended post-merger value.

Leadership style, timing and a collaborative implementation approach fostering employee participation tip the scales between enabling engagement versus disengagement across cultures, thereby establishing the requisite new corporate identity, focus, loyalty and purpose.

Even when done correctly, there is a tendency to quit the process due to exhaustion just prior to reaching the end of the duality stage, before achieving the intended value. Creating a Culture of Engagement through a focus on these three critical issues, organizations can flow through this stage to a healthy and robust company that maintains and can enhance shareholder value.

Collaborating together, Sandy and Roberta designed and developed the first Post Merger Integration Readiness Training of its kind which focuses on the human dimension of mergers and acquisitions.  The Merger Simulation section was piloted in the fall of 2007.