cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

Mergers and acquisitionsside of the road or the right-hand side of the road. You need to adapt to localways of doing things.The amount of cultural integration required depends on the reason forthe merger or acquisition. If core processes are to be combined foreconomies of scale, then integration is important and needs to be givenmanagement time and attention. However, if the company acquires aportfolio of diverse businesses it is possible that culture integration willonly be necessary at the senior management level.The best way to integrate cultures is to get people working togetheron solving business problems and achieving results that could not havebeen achieved before the merger or acquisition. In ‘Making the dealreal’ (Ashkenas, Demonaco and Francis, 1998), the authors have distilledtheir acquisition experiences at GE into four steps intended to bridgecultural gaps:• Welcome and meet early with the new acquisition management team.Create a 100-day plan with their help.• Communicate and keep the process going. Pay attention to audience,timing, mode and message. This does not just mean bulletins, butvideos, memos, town meetings and visits from management.• Address cultural issues head-on by running a focused, facilitated‘cultural workout’ workshop with the new acquisition managementteam. This is grounded on analysis of cultural issues and focused oncosts, brands, customers and technology.• Cascade the integration process through, giving others access to acultural workout.Roffey Park research (Devine, 1999) confirms the need to tackle culturalissues. This research shows that culture clashes are the main source ofmerger failure and can cost as much as 25–30 per cent in lost performance.They identify some of the signs of a culture clash:• people talk in terms of ‘them and us’;• people glorify the past, talking of the ‘good old days’;• newcomers are vilified;235