MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Merger management
happen and we discussed them with Ed and Rory and agreed it
and we then had to implement that. That was a huge task. The
first priority, we decided, was that we had to get the right people
with the right skills in the right places. We did not promise
anything outside the department until we knew that we could do
that. So there was the question of some staff going on
redundancy, others seeing what their expectations were, trying
to work out the best of each of the schemes of research that
there had been before and add in some more (Interviewee J)
There was a delay while some people left but we were allowed
to replace those people in different functions and get the skills of
the new people up and running. It was a great period of change
and uncertainty so there was kind of reassurance. We built a
team of new people in when we needed them are obviously we
were a year behind in doing that. (Interviewee J)
Well first of all it was building a team. This was partly about
bringing on individuals but it was also about relationships within
the team and initially, because we were doing a lot of training,
John and I initiated and directed a lot of things, kind of top down
within the department. What we have tried to do, very
consciously, is to try and set that down and change the balance
of it with that (Interviewee J)
Meanwhile, some in senior management had their own pressing
concern:-
The discussions went on for hours on what our new titles would
be. I was not very popular at the meetings because I had
listened to so much and said "look, there are not far short of
200,000 members out there waiting for some sort of service out
of us. We have now spent upwards of 2 hours talking about
what our new titles could be. I couldn't care less. You can call
me office junior if you want to. Just give me a meaningful
position in the new organisation and you can call me anything
you like. But can we please get on." And I was isolated. But
no, this was very important, that we got the titles right and it was
an issue that the others in the room clearly attached far greater
importance to than I did. But it was as a result of all that and
possibly as a result of my little spat that we have ended up with
all these titles that we had in the old organisations. (Interviewee
M)
Despite the insufficiency of data on how a corporate approach to
management of the merger was managed on the ground, the IIP
assessment of July 2000 made a number of findings, based on staff
feedback, which indicate that some success was achieved:-
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