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Bringing two or more cultures together
can be a brilliant and beautiful experience
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can be exciting, but they also come with big cultural challenges.
Bringing two or more companies together means blending different ways of working, leadership styles, and values. This can lead to friction, uncertainty, fear and even resistance from employees who feel like they’re losing the culture they once knew.
If not handled well, it can hurt morale, reduce productivity and often lead to the great people leaving.
But when done right, M&A can actually strengthen company culture.
It’s an opportunity to bring in fresh ideas, diverse perspectives, and new ways of thinking. Strong leadership, open communication, authentic and safe discussions about what's really going on, what it really feels like alongside a focus on shared goals can help teams align and turn differences into strengths.
In the end, a new culture will emerge that everybody can see themselves, their history and their futures in - creating a more dynamic, adaptable, and forward-thinking organisation.
A high performing culture
that everyone owns
Case Study
A mid-tier law firm, growing rapidly through acquisition, wanted to create a high-performance culture without losing the great aspects of their culture that attracted people to work for them over other law firms.
They also wanted to develop accountability for leadership deeper in the firm, so rather than defining their culture for them, we invited their Partners and teams into a collective inquiry.
Kicking off the inquiry at Silverstone with the top 100 Partners, we de-mystified what it takes to successfully lead complex change – such as evolving culture.
All Partners then attended a leadership programme to explore the question themselves before inviting their teams to experiment with new ways of working. Together they are consciously recognising aspects of their culture to protect, and what to evolve, including what performance means to them.
The inquiry is a continuous learning cycle through which Partners reconvene to share learning, and return to experimenting with new ways of being together with their teams.
They have greater clarity of areas to develop - spin off projects have included clarifying purpose and values, improving communication and governance. They are learning how to learn together and create the culture they want. together.
When two cultures collide -
post acquisition
Case Study
A market-leading, award winning, Global FinTech bought their larger competitor. Overnight they more than doubled in size and went from a single UK base to people across 10+ countries.
Their open, exciting, dynamic and ambitious culture was now trying to welcome in a calm, process driven group of industry experts.
18 months after the merger people still described the old and the new people, an in-group and an out-group on both sides.
We worked with the organisation initially around creating a sense of belonging - together we treated the challenge as we would a DEI issue. By supporting people to understand their biases, challenge their thinking, get to know others, and build trust.
Mindsets needed to be shifted before behaviours and language were going anywhere.
As the cultures began to merge something new emerged.
One did not win over the other, but instead the best bits from both were exchanged. Teams now work together more, share ideas and ways of working. Leadership styles have become complimentary and a sense of belonging to the 'one team' is thriving.
"Working with Juliet and Sammy for the last year has been highly rewarding. They have helped us create an even more inclusive company, challenging us also to think about how we work together as an organisation while maintaining high levels of performance and achievement." - Chief People Officer
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people and culture!