For this blog entry, I want to focus on the learnings from Lesson 5/6 as it relates to cultural synergy and organizational change within my company. Synergy is defined as “a cooperative or combined action, and occurs when diverse or disparate individuals or groups collaborate for a common cause. The objective is to increase effectiveness by sharing perceptions and experiences, insights, and knowledge.” (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014, p . 266)
While my company is one of the most popular and well known companies in the US and presented as a single entity, internally we were two separate businesses down to our balance sheets. About 3 years ago the company decided that we would merge and this would be known internally as (company name) 2.0. For the most part as an organization we are used to changing abruptly or rather the constant freezing and unfreezing period as described in Lewin’s Change Management model (PSU WC, 2021). So the announcement of the change itself wasn’t as painful, however, most of us in the company understood that this change would mean that not only are the two businesses coming together but there would also be overlap in roles. Overlap in roles usually means there will need to be lots of movement and potentially job cuts.
The anxiety around job cuts or role replacement made the synergy amongst the two competing groups strained for some time. We spent a lot of time asking our leaders to be clear with us about role clarity even after we officially merged because people were not willing to let go of their work or worse yet, deciding that they were not responsible for specific work and so it was not getting done. This caused a lot of frustration but the company continued to make changes to the leadership teams throughout so that the right leaders would be in place to continue tackling these issues more granularly within their respective organizations.
Since executive leaders had to work out their synergy and conflict issues amongst themselves, they were in turn able to come up with a plan and north star that all the organizations would follow. This helped us to be more aligned across the board as we all had clear direction on what we needed to work towards. We also now had clear role clarity which allowed everyone to focus on the work in front of them that they hadn’t been able to do before. Three years later and we are back to running like a well oiled machine as a company, wherein we are all aligned, conflicts are minimal, and we have great synergy.
Abramson, N., Moran, R., (2018). Managing Cultural Differences. 10th edition. Routledge. New York, NY. P.266
OLEAD 410: Lesson 05 : Learning and Change in a Global Setting. (n.d.). Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2146712/modules/items/32847673
OLEAD 410: Lesson 06 : Cultural Synergy. (n.d.). Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2146712/modules/items/32847678
Hi everyone,
thank you for your feedback on this post. I wanted to be sure to answer any follow up questions:
*Also, did your organization have to go create new training to help this issues?*
My organization did a number of things to keep the flow of communication going. At first that was hard to do as a lot of the information was being trickled down by leadership, but for more important things like what it meant for our bottom line or benefits, etc, there were training videos since tat affected a wider group. We also have weekly company wide updates with our Chief People Officer where we can submit questions ahead of time. It has turned into a great forum overall.
What methods did your organization’s leaders use to get back on track?
So a lot of this involved pulse surveys but the problem with pulse surveys is they don’t happen often enough. Our leaders would take the pulse survey results and have big room meetings and come back with action plans that didn’t always seem that well thought out and were always a little to late. Eventually they realized that they needed regular feedback and they needed to provide regular updates, so they tasked Directors with this work since they are closer to their individual orgs and needs within the business. For my org in particular, we have retrospectives once a month where we talk about what’s currently working, what’s not working, and then we come up with action plans. We continually iterate on these plans and we all feel like we have a safe space to voice any concerns. It has worked extremely well as it allows us as individual contributors or middle management the opportunity to be leaders of change. We formally document the action plans and any outcomes which then gets funneled up to executives. When we have our town halls, we then get to see how the broader organization is doing.
Hi there,
I’m so glad I came across your post! Synergy is VITAL to the flow of an organization and allows for maximum productivity. I can definitely see how the merging of two, once seperate entities would create confusion in regards to role clarity and responsibility when many roles are deleted or modified. I am glad to see that your company worked it out and things are fine now, three years later. Did it take three years to work out the issues, if not, how long did it approximately take? Also, did your organization have to go create new training to help this issues? What methods did your organization’s leaders use to get back on track?
Best,
Olivia
Hello there,
The company I work for also went through a merger about three years ago and I recall this be a strenuous time as well. Similarly, the synergy between management and subordinates needed some fine tuning. We needed leadership to clarify our benefit changes as well as our paid time off requests. They also had implemented changes to our 401K contributions, as well as bonuses. We also had changes to our individual roles with some of us taking on more work also. It did take management about three to six months to get all of the new policies in place, and everyone to settle into their new roles which allowed for a more even work caseload. Our system applications are still being upgraded, but the corporation seems to have invested in training programs that helps keep everyone up to date on changes, which is a big improvement. Did your organization also refine its training program? I find it easier to watch a training video that answers a majority of the questions, whereas before, we had to ask our supervisors and then wait until they got back to us with the answers.
I believe your topic regarding cultural synergy and organizational change is especially important to discuss in 2021. Businesses, more than ever before, are under increasingly difficult multi-faceted internal and external pressures that require rapid large and or small changes. Typically, leadership has invested more focus, time, and energy on external pressures like improving sales, managing regulations, or gaining political capital. The voice of the employees, while important, did not carry enough weight to cause leadership to make large sweeping changes, unless an internal business situation was critical to the company’s future.
In your example, you mentioned that there was a higher degree of anxiety amongst employees, and this affected the synergy. As you stated this was 3 years ago and the atmosphere which described exemplifies my point of how the tides have changed. Last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) the number of quits increased in August to 4.3 million an increase of 242k compared to prior month (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021). Comparing this to the August 2019 JOLTS report, quits were at 3.5 million with a decreasing trend, -142k compared to prior month 2019 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019).
The point is changes like the one you described are stressing people out and if leadership doesn’t listen or consider the human aspect of change. The JOLT numbers are going to continue to climb and further pressures will be applied internally to those leaders. This is the nature of change due to a large-scale response to unacceptable parameters. Employees are fed up and the numbers tell the story. It would be interesting to scenario play and see the how the leaders of your company would make the same decisions with today’s internal pressures.
References
Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2019, October 9). Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Retrieved from Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/jolts_10092019.htm
Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2021, October 12). Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Retrieved from Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm