Question We have recently merged with another company and are trying to combine two companies with fairly established cultures. The question- what do you think is the BEST way to reconcile these two cultures.
Answer Culture is history- organizations value practices, policies, and attitudes because they have inspired and worked in the past. To change or integrate culture, management has to understand the current cultures, determine the culture they want, and then either reinterpret history, or make new history, to create and manage the culture they want.
The first step is to look at the history of both organizations to see what they implicitly, as well as explicitly, value. In a company with a more decentralized culture you'll find stories of new customers won or new products created (3M, for example) without top management direction. In companies that merge, there will be different aspects of culture, some good, some perhaps not so.
The second step is for top management to determine the culture they want considering the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats the new organization faces. This requires vision and thorough consideration.
Once management has determined the kind of culture it wants, it needs to get the organization to recognize these changes. Reinterpreting history requires data and sound logic, but can be done- perhaps company success was not driven by a certain practice as much as just having a great product, for example. But creating new history- by creating new policies and practices, and aggressively rewarding desired behaviors and requiring accountability- will lead to a new culture. And as the organization clearly sees the new history and top management support behind it, it will become clear that a new story is being written.
