Feature Story: By Feature Jamar Laster Story
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heartbeat. A mindset. The core from which everything else extends. No matter what word or term you use, it’s widely acknowledged that a company’s culture is vital to its business success. AmyK, international award-winning speaker, founder and intelligence activist at AmyK Inc., and author of the Amazon best-selling book, “The Secret Leaders Keep,” says culture drives buy-in and engagement for meeting and exceeding goals. Brian Braudis, an author, coach and consultant who works with executives, management teams and individuals to release human and organizational potential, says culture does not only define how a company perceives, thinks, feels and solves problems. It is also an accumulated and collective learning based on a history of shared experiences with a company. Translation: Culture binds a company’s leaders, employees, ideals, thoughts and actions under one cohesive umbrella. “Culture comes about as a result of a strong human need – you could call it a drive – for stability, consistency and meaning, which cause a variety of shared elements and experiences of a company to shape into patterns that become a culture,” Braudis says. “It is learned and instilled through the deepest fibers of a company. The effective maintenance and nourishment of a positive, progressive and rewarding company culture would be a much more easily attainable goal in a business climate where corporate mergers, acquisitions and consolidations weren’t commonplace. But the frequency with which these actions occur make the following questions apropos: How can executive leaders effectively blend cultures or establish a common culture? How can we find the human side of business? What obstacles hinder the creation of positive culture and how can they be overcome?
The Merger Quandary
Jennifer J. Fondrevay, a chief humanity officer and internationally skilled C-suite executive who has survived three multibillion-dollar acquisitions, says blending cultures after a merger or acquisition can, at its lowest point, become a turf war. Fondrevay says she frequently sees large companies acquiring small, entrepreneurial companies for their products, spirit and outside-the-box thinking, only to rip apart those aspects at the time of integration. “There are several challenges in blending cultures. Does one culture dominate another? Who decides? What parts of the culture are maintained?" Fondrevay says that one side might feel that all elements of their culture must be maintained when another side does not value them so much. "And the acquiring company might not feel that they have to adopt any of the acquired company’s culture. They are the acquirers so they may think, ‘Why bother?’” AmyK says another barrier to blending cultures is the uncertainty that doing so will yield success. She says people actually crave change, but only when they know or believe it will result in positive outcomes. “We often ruminate, ‘Will this specific change set me up for success tomorrow?’” she says. Braudis, author of the e-book, “The Way Upward: Make Your Limiting Past a Limitless Future,” says most of the difficulty in blending cultures has to do with unlearning old, less effective ways or habits. “Culture has been collectively learned over time and is embedded in routines that have become part of a group and even a personal identity,” Braudis says. “The key is to understand people. Recognize that their resistance to change is less defiance and more fear of violating or losing some aspect of their identity.”
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