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O P I N I O N
Change management
Mergers and acquisitions, among other events, can wreak havoc on firms. Keep in mind that when faced with upheaval, different people adjust in different ways.
I checked Wikipedia at the start of this article, and found a broad and interesting definition for the term “change management,” as follows: “Change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare and support individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational changes. The most common change drivers include ... pressure from new business entrants, acquisitions, mergers, and organizational restructuring.”
Bernie Siben THE FAST LANE
And when the two firms involved have different cultures, the “settling in” period can be longer and much more painful than any of the owners imagined. Some changes are small, requiring little effort “Change is never easy, and it brings its own difficulties to the leaders who instigate the change as well as the employees who have to adapt.”
Having been a full-time employee in multiple firms that either acquired or were acquired by another, it is my experience that the two most troubling of the drivers listed above are generally acquisitions and mergers, especially in a professional services company. Both acquisition and merger change your company’s service offering and the way it delivers those services, and also change the overall way your company does business, the way it plans for the future, the way it pursues new projects, the way its administrative processes flow and impact the work, and a host of other factors.
See BERNIE SIBEN, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER August 6, 2018, ISSUE 1259
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