Q I work for a multi-business organisation that has grown in recent years through mergers and acquisitions. We have five separate finance teams, each reporting to its own chief executive. I work in our ‘original’ business and my boss has asked me to chair a project group to kickstart the alignment of financial systems across all of our businesses. Even in early project discussions, I am facing a lot of push back from colleagues across the board. What is the best way to handle this?
A. Of course, the answer is “it all depends”.
It depends on the circumstances of the mergers and acquisitions you mentioned: Were they hostile or friendly? Were people treated well? How much loyalty is there to the old versus the new entity? What efforts have been made to integrate people across the different businesses?
Mergers are often messy – they give rise to a lot of concern, envy about others’ terms and conditions, loyalty to “the old gang” and nostalgia for “the good old days”. I have worked for businesses post-merger that, even 25 years later, continue to hold separate Christmas parties for “new” and “old” teams.
Resistance to change is often less about the change itself and more a way to signal discomfort with the way the change is being handled.
The danger is that your efforts to determine the best way forward might be sabotaged. Even if your boss wants you to work at speed here, my advice is to proceed at a slower, steady pace, engaging in such a way that people are happy enough with any changes introduced.
First, get to know each of the organisation’s finance teams individually, attend their team meetings and encourage discussion about how the merger has been for them and the future of the finance function.
Second, organise an offsite exercise for all five finance teams and have each give a presentation about their history, development, processes, systems, challenges and goals for the year ahead. Note what they have in common and build on this.
During this offsite, encourage the finance teams to get to know each other. Perhaps the members of one team would be interested in spending time (a day, even) with another?
Third, bring all of the team leaders together once a month to review progress and discuss strategic issues. Let them see the advantages of working in the group.
Following these three steps may make it easier for the members of each team to lean into the tough work involved in change.
When you get to explicitly working on systems alignment, you can approach it in a collaborative way, asking: What are our opportunities? What are our challenges? How can we best support the group as a whole, and the businesses within it?
Finance professionals are often asked to lead technical change, but successful and speedy integration depends as much on people as on processes and systems. Taking the time to build relationships and a shared sense of purpose at the outset will pay dividends when harder decisions need to be made further down the line.
Julia Rowan is Principal Consultant with Performance Matters Ltd, a leadership and team development consultancy. To send a question to Julia, email julia@performancematters.ie
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