How prepared are your people to deal with the
disruptive change of becoming part of an expanded
organisation?
Become a flexible organisation that is able to
succeed in an unpredictable environment.
On this page:
We help you promote flexibility within your organisation
and support you in guiding your organisation through
transition, to make sure your business will be
not just bigger, but also better after a merger
or an acquisition.
Enterprises are getting bigger and bigger through
mergers, amalgamations and acquisitions, often
to be picked up by private equity companies or
venture capitalists to be divided up again.
Change and transition have become the
norm for most organisations today.
Buying, selling or merging companies can facilitate
and finance the rapid growth of your enterprise
in your industry without having to generate another
business entity from scratch. While economic issues
and profitability are usually investigated in depth,
the consequences on your workforce during such
a change is often overlooked. This can have an
adverse effect on a successful outcome of your
venture.
Demands on people are big.
- Common problems faced after a merger
or an acquisition are:
- Different IT systems
- Departments doubling up
- Two people for the same
position
- Differing cultures
The challenges of merger
and acquisition changes will primarily
involve employees, since every person reacts differently
and usually unfavourably, to change. The companies
with an agile workforce that can adapt quickly
to unexpected circumstances will do best in this
unstable environment.
Change associated with a merger or an acquisition
is problematic and unpredictable, and can threaten
your company's success. In order to achieve a positive
outcome, your people and the company structure
must be able to balance between the familiar
and the unfamiliar.
| Optimising
communication processes |
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As senior management you need to promote flexibility
within your organisation and also be able to guide
the organisation through such a transition.
Social processes and communication are
vital for a successful merger or acquisition.
Communication needs to go beyond the operational
level of churning out updates in newsletters and
emails to a more strategic approach with
an expanded view of the whole system, such as:
- Pay
tribute to the old systems for the new system
to have a chance
- Respect the culture of the smaller
system when merging
- Grant everyone an equal right
to belong to the company as long they are there
- Investigate
what is worth keeping – focus
on the positive instead of the negative
- Look at
positions: are they strengthening the business
and the people holding them?
- The new system takes
precedence over the old systems
- Acknowledge leadership:
they are important in difficult times, they make
the decisions
- Acknowledge performance
- Acknowledge long-term
employees
- Ensure that new leaders have a style
that respects the experience and knowledge of
the staff who have been there longer
- Establish
who is going and who is staying: does the organisation
still need this person?
- If required,
separate by agreement and with acknowledgement
of each other
These processes can be supported by systemic
organisational consultancy and in particular systemic
organisational constellations.
| Focus
on social processes |
|
When you start looking at your organisation as
a living system,
social processes become important, in particular
the relationships between staff members of two
merging companies.
The systemic approach to
the human factor of a merger or acquisition promises
success because it is inclusive, involving all
levels of the old and new enterprises. It has been
applied and researched in particular in the German
speaking parts of Europe, where this methodology
is now widely spread.
Koenigswieser & Network in Vienna, Austria are such consultants.
They describe one of their success stories, in their book “Systemic
Consultancy in Organisations”. It is a change process in an international
group of companies with 20,000 employees worldwide, dealing in industrial plant
manufacturing.
Empirical research on work relationships to determine
the workplace health and safety culture in organisations was conducted
under the leadership of Franz Ruppert in Munich, Germany. As part of this study
the informant’s initial systemic constellation image was of people they
deemed important in relation to the workplace health and safety act. This image
was analysed by evaluating the relationship between the representatives through
their use of language, utilising a quantitative method. The outcome of this
study was that businesses reporting a stronger safety record in the overall
study, showed more cooperative relationships between safety experts and other
members of staff in their constellations. A report on this can be found in “Praxis
der Organisationsaufstellungen”, edited by Gunthard Weber,
so far only published in German.
| We
can help you achieve this |
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We are systemic organisational consultants that
can help you steer the social processes in your
venture. We use:
System analysis to understand the current
fabric of your organisation
Systemic
organisational constellation work
to find weak links, establish good order and
evaluate the impact of strategies
Team
facilitation to promote buy-in
Systemic IT training to help prevent
implementation trauma of new IT systems
Systemic coaching for vulnerable members of
staff
For a description of the services we offer as in-house
assignments, please refer to tools
and techniques.
In times of change and transition strong personal
and family issues can arise for you or some of
your staff members.
We offer personal transformation programs
and systemic family constellation workshops
outside the structure of your company
For the public workshops we offer please refer
to our schedule
Contact us for more information or to book an initial conversation without
obligation.
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