Phil, Two years ago a part of university merged with a profit organization. There was no choice for the employees. And there was a lot of resistance because of the differences in corporate cultures. The issue found was the difference in rates. In the Netherlands not for profit organizations do not have to charge for taxes and profit organizations have. Simply spoken the employees did not want to merge because it was impossible to have one fee. This was one of the visible issues. Underlaying was the difference in culture. Working on a university meant for a lot of the workers that you are free to do your scientific work. That means no interference from the management, not counting the hours work etc. While working in a profit organization meant that scientific work has to serve other goals, results of examinations will be corrupted because of the management wants specific results etc. This was just the beginning of controverses and believe me there were a lot.
As consultant I was asked how to handle this. All workers were highly educated professionals and it does not work to tell them what to do. We agreed to an OS for both workers of the university and the profit organization. There were more than 300 participants. After the introduction I had to get out of their way. Passion and responsability - it worked so well. All frustrations about the merge that was not choosen by the workers were mentioned but in a very supportive way. Because in OS there is no resistance - it is only a way of showing their their deepest concern and when put your trust in the simple question: what is your passion and do you want to take the responsability for it - then as consultant you do not have to interfere. That day people who were very opposite to each other spoke to eachother and shared their concern and this was a really sharing (perhaps for the first time). That day meant a shift and a huge accelleration in the merging proces. So in my experience everything you can imagine what has to be brought up, every issue you can think of are the issues that will be brought up by them if you can give them time and space. And they are not only discussed, people tend to do something about it. They make an action planning by themselves and there is no resistance that you have to overcome. They take care for the implementation I hope that this answers your question. If you want to know some more, please ask me. Douke Oostenbrink Harrison Gifford Change Works! -------Original Message------- Van: OSLIST Datum: 04/27/04 19:24:15 Aan: [email protected] Onderwerp: Mergers and acquisitions? Does anyone have experience using OS as a facilitative tool for a corporate merger of two similar-sized companies (~100 each - if numbers matter)? Or anything similar The actual merger, of course, is a fait accompli, so it's not "if" but "how" - how to bring two groups, two cultures, two up-until-now competitors together as one family. What are the issues that need to be discussed, what needs to happen to create synergies and not go through months of dysfunctionality? It seems to me OS would be a healthy way to go about doing this - though I may be wrong? I'd appreciate hearing stories/thoughts. Thanks, Phil Culhane * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
