There's a merger in your future

Mergers will affect most of us who work for a company, and most of us will endure several during our careers. In spite of the careful and detailed analysis corporate heads perform when they contemplate a merger (often referred to as due diligence), differences in company cultures are usually given little or no consideration. Do employees dress differently? Do one company's best and brightest show up for work in shorts and T-shirts, toting skateboards, whereas the other company's employees wouldn't dream of arriving without polished shoes? If employees are used to having offices, will they feel valued working in a cubicle, even if the CEO does the same? Do companies expect employees to ask for permission or forgiveness? These issues are generally left for individual employees and their harried managers to resolve. As a survivor as well as an observer of many mergers, the author can attest that culture clashes are something that merged employees must handle on a daily basis. These are not abstract issues; employees face them every moment of every working day. If ignored, they rarely go away; they escalate, sometimes to the point of destroying the merger.