There are five critical issues that are faced by the executive team right from the beginning:

• Timing
• Identity
• Duality
• Leading a Top Down – Bottom Up Focus
• Communications

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.  A discordant or lax employee integration process can devalue the new company and its ability to perform and gain intended post-merger value.

Just looking at one of these critical factors “Dualities” demonstrates the extreme complexity that faces the Transition Team:

• Top-Down and Bottom-up simultaneously occurring
• Two cultures integrating into a third culture
• Old and new processes / systems on-going with overlaps, duplication and uniqueness
• Different roles / Different loyalties / Conflicting demands
• External pressures from customers
• Consolidation of physical assets and locations
• Confusion over an emotional identity

Short -Term Impact When These Issues Are Not Addressed Simultaneously

• Day-to-day decision-making stops, waiting for the top to inform / act.
• Personal value is questioned. People ask Where do I fit? Or  Do I fit?
• Rumors and gossip abound, becoming the new communication medium.
• Roles and career paths are not understood. Performance deteriorates.
• Personal security and future progress are threatened.
• Turnover increases – talent leaves – as company commitment is diminished.
• Worker morale plummets while stress and frustration increase.
• Cultural, corporate and country differences are magnified and feared.
• Customer loyalty diminishes and shareholder value drops.