What happens when 2 organizations that“do the same things” are joined together.
Two different companies, 400 miles apart, under different organizational structures and cultures, both under government contracts to do the same advanced technology design and development work. They were to be technical checks for the other and existed in this competitive environment for decades. They were pitted against each other for technical contracts and encouraged to challenge the designs of the other. In the 90’s with economical realities setting in and what were once new technologies now maturing, these 2 companies were now being encouraged to collaborate and be nice to each other. In the 00’s they merged and eventually re-organized into truly one company, one organizational structure.
In the midst of this restructuring I was asked to facilitate the merging of 2 organizations of 10 to 15 people each that “did the same thing” and were now a single organization. They did, in fact do the same things, but it was immediately recognized that they did them in very different ways. Their processes were very different. Which processes should the single organization use? Which was best? Was there a third process, something better than either existing process, that they should develop and use? Sometimes the individuals did not want to change, sometimes they were hoping that the other organization had a better process. There was some trust, sometimes, and not so much other times. What to do?
What we did to start coming together as single team was to get the 2 groups together in the middle, a neutral location, for multi day sessions. Tools such as video conferences, telecons, email texting all have their place and we used them all, but face-to-face contact is the best and preferred option to address trust and relationship issues and really get things going towards understanding and ultimately improvement. We applied FISH!©[1] principles and goals to develop team dynamics and relationships. We wanted to be a single high performing team. Attacking our processes was next and I won’t say this was easy. We had multiple processes, some entirely within our control, some embedded in bigger corporate processes. Even the ones within our control were varied. Some processes the individual sites liked and wanted to keep, others they disliked and hoped the other site had a good one. We mapped, we discussed, we argued, we eliminated wasteful steps, we laughed, we streamlined new processes, we developed implementation plans and went home. Implementation was hard and got off track many times. Ultimately we got to a better place, not all at once and not in every process. More always needs to be done. This stuff is hard and success sometimes is achieved slowly. You have to keep at it, you have to check and re-check on progress. Decisions need to be made, remade and re-enforced. You are creating something new and better and everyone needs to be engaged and contributing. Ultimately we got to a much better place with more efficient and effective processes and better working relationships. Not universally across the board with every process but progress was happening.
[1] FISH!, Lundin, Paul and Christensen, Hyperion, NY, 2000