The CEO’s question to us
We have acquired a competitor which will double our size. The market (price) is under pressure. We need to move fast but the integration requires us to connect systems, offices and people. The day to day operations needs to continue and quality may not suffer.
Background
This family owned (mainly) European logistics player in chemicals and gas bought a competitor (PE) to increase its presence globally. With 2000 staff in more than 20 countries, working with two different IT systems and 32.000 tanks moving across the globe, the integration was a complex process but needed to be completed in 6 months time. The global and European market appeared to be significantly different in market turbulence impacting both sales and operational requirements. The two organisational cultures were built on different values.
The challenge as we saw it
- How to ensure continuation of the current business, maintain high quality delivery (In Full and on Time) whilst working on efficiencies, a new organisational structure and culture?
- How to create crystal clear Must Win Battles and align all actions accordingly?
- How to simultaneously integrate both the assets and capabilities such as IT systems and procedures and build trust and engagement in newly developed teams?
- How to maintain psychological safety whilst encouraging people to take ownership for challenging tasks?
- How to turn the mixed feelings of anxiety and excitement of the acquired company into belief and actions?
What we did
- With the Board we made key decisions in priorities, identified risks and developed a coherent and consistent story, roadmap and communications plan.
- Build internal capacity to manage the integration as well as an internal project management structure.
- Coaching of key leadership positions to deal with the change personally and engage their teams locally.
What the client got out of it
- Continuation of service of both entities.
- Successful integration of the two systems, office moves and team development.
- Employee believe and trust build across the new organisation.
- Internal change management capacity build.
- Innovative ideas about new possibilities of the new organisation.