Managing Through Mergers And Acquisitions Transcript

Insight on Coaching
Managing Through Mergers and Acquisitions Transcript

Prepared for: Prepared by:

IEC: Insight Ubiqus Reporting
Educational
Consulting

Time Speaker Transcript

0:31 Tom Floyd Hello everyone and welcome to Insight on Coaching.
Insight on Coaching explores the many facets, flavors, and sides of the emerging
professional coaching field.
I’m Tom Floyd, the CEO of Insight Educational Consulting and your host on today’s
show.
Well today’s show focuses on how coaching can assist managers and corporate
executives, guide their companies through mergers and acquisitions. Topics
discussed include:
How coaching can be used to help leaders create strong and effective work
teams.
How coaching can bridge cultural differences across organizations that are
coming together and help leaders and managers communicate with confidence.
And how coaching can ensure the retention of key employees as individuals from
different companies and cultures come together.
Well to get started I’d like to share some recent information and interesting tidbits that
some folks in our research team came up with related to mergers and acquisitions.
Take a listen to this.
According to Dealogic, in 2006 mergers and acquisitions in the United States totaled
310.7 billion, which is a pretty astounding number.
Substantial mergers and acquisitions in 2006 occurred between organizations
including General Motors and Cerberus, Alcatel and Lucent, Boston Scientific and
Guidant, NTL which is a UK-based cable company and Virgin Mobile, and the
National Bank of Greece and Finansbank of Turkey just to name a few.
Now the technology sector also saw a significant number of mergers and acquisitions
as well, for example AT&T acquired Bell South.
I’m sure a lot of our listeners have heard about the acquisition between Google of
YouTube last year.
Cingular acquired AT&T Wireless, and then Hewlett-Packard also acquired Mercury
Interactive which is a company here in the Silicon Valley.
Well to kind of step back though before we speak with some of our guests more
about this let’s talk a little bit about what a merger is exactly.
Doing a quick scan on the web according to Wikipedia, a merger is a combination of
two companies into one larger company.
Such actions are commonly voluntary and involved stock swap or cash payment to
the target.
Now a stock swap is often used because it allows the shareholders of the two
companies to share the risk involved in the deal, and another important thing to note
is that a merger can kind of resemble a takeover in some situations but can
sometimes result in a new company name which could combine the names of the
original companies and potentially new branding and other factors as well.

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Now also according to Wikipedia’s definitions an acquisition can take the form of a
purchase of the stock or other equity interests of an acquired organization or it can
also result in the acquisition of all or a substantial amount of the acquired company’s
assets.
Now our team looked at data from other sources as well and for example according
to the Harvard Business Review mergers and acquisitions can occur for five primary
reasons those this list is certainly not exhaustive:
One, to deal with over capacity through consolidation in mature industries.
Two, to roll up competitors in geographically fragmented industries.
Three, to extend into new products or markets.
Four, as a substitute for research and development.
And five, to exploit eroding industry boundaries by inventing an industry.
Now in change management terms in our organization IEC also considers mergers
and acquisitions to be a type of transformational change which means a significant
change that effects the company’s missions, its strategy, its culture, environment,
workforce, and essentially the company’s overall identity or who the company really
is at its core.
So it’s a pretty big change.
Well as you can imagine challenges and problems certainly occur during mergers
and acquisitions.
Depending on the type of merger Harvard Business Review indicated there can be a
variety of challenges including quickly having to decide what stays and what goes in
the newly merged company which Harvard Business Review describes as
rationalization.
Also, if the acquiring company is as large as the company being acquired and both
have differing values and processes determining how to bring these two radically
different groups together.
Power struggles and fights for control of the new company between the management
groups of both organizations can certainly come into play as well.
And also not extending enough outreach to stakeholders within both of the
organizations coming together and really involving key influencers or resisters
impacted by this major change in the process.
Well as we said at the beginning today’s show really focuses on how professional
coaching can be used to help individuals involved in a merger or acquisition and I
really think we’re going to have a lot to talk about today and I’m looking forward to
hearing from our guests’ perspectives on many of these items.
So hopefully this helped set the stage for a lot of folks out there.
Well let me go ahead and before we jump into our conversations with our guests I will
give you a quick overview of both of them.
I am very happy to welcome two guests to today’s show; Emily Crawford and Tim
Dorman.

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Emily Crawford is an acknowledged expert in creating value in the human resources
function with more than 20 years’ experience in talent management and
organizational development she’s provided strategic counsel to a variety of firms in
the retail industry.
Currently, Emily also provides consulting services to organizations seeking to perfect
the human side of business.
Previously as Chief Learning Officer for Saks Incorporated, Crawford was
responsible for directing talent assessment, education, and development for more
than 50,000 employees.
She received a President’s Award for saving more than 5 million in hiring and training
expenses at a major retailer, a $500,000 grant from the National Retail Federation
Foundation to develop the Fundamentals of Retail Management Program.
The 2006 Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Award and the Bersin and Associates
Learning Leaders Award for 2006.
Welcome to the show Emily.

6:40 Emily Crawford Thank you.

6:41 Tom Floyd Our next guest is Tim Dorman.
Tim Dorman leads the Leadership Coaching and Development Group of Korn/Ferry
International, helping executives, teams and corporations around the world achieve
their highest levels of performance and potential.
He brings an effective blend of general management experience in a publicly held
company, twenty years of consulting in executive coaching, organizational
development, executive search and career management and nine years of corporate
human resource management.
He has coached senior executives in a wide range of industries including media,
financial services, high technology, health care, transportation, manufacturing and
retail.
Tim is a frequent speaker to professional groups on leadership development,
organizational change issues and international business.
He is a member of the International Coaching Federation.
Welcome Tim!

7:28 Tim Dorman Thank you Tom.

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7:29 Tom Floyd Now today’s show is going to be a group discussion.
I’m going to pose questions to both of our guests as a panel to get the group’s
thoughts and to get both of your thoughts.
Now Tim and Emily kind of starting out from a big picture perspective my first
question really is why is coaching an important intervention to consider when going
through a merger or acquisition?
Tim, let’s start with you.

7:55 Tim Dorman When you were sharing your research Tom that your team put together I was
reminded of some additional research that has indicated that despite best intentions
the majority of mergers and acquisitions fail to achieve the financial objectives which
were part of the driving force that led the merger or acquisition to begin with which
then poses the question what happened to the best intent, why did they fail.

8:31 Tom Floyd Exactly.

8:32 Tim Dorman And one of those primary reasons again and again and again is because they did not
pay significant attention to the people’s side of the equation that at the end of the day
are responsible for driving the relative success or failure of that merger or acquisition
and you’ve got cultures that simply could not come together effectively.
Coaching is simply a very, very effective vehicle to address that reality.

9:05 Tom Floyd And in terms of really thinking of people in the equation from your perspective what
really keeps companies from doing that?
Is it that they’re so focused on the actual financial side and wanting to make it
happen as quickly as possible that just kind of pushed off to the side or-

9:21 Tim Dorman That’s a great question because the reality is if the answer is simple why doesn’t
everybody do this?


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9:31 Tim Dorman And I think part of it is simply sort of the thrill of the chase and the focus on the
financials and trying to drive those and yet if you take a look at the acquisitions and
mergers that have been successful you will typically find a very, very high correlation
to a very effective focus on the people’s side of the equation.

10:07 Tom Floyd Got it.

10:08 Tim Dorman I’ll leave it to Emily to come up with the reason why more people are not participating.

10:13 Emily Crawford I’ll give it my best shot.

10:15 Tom Floyd Go ahead.

10:16 Emily Crawford Well I totally concur with you Tim and when I was thinking about the question there
are so many people at so many different levels who are going to be affecting the lives
of front line workers, managers, and up the ladder to their partners and they don’t
pay enough attention to the people side of the business and all of the changes that
people are going to experience through the acquisition or the merger.
So many decisions that have to be made and I think that one of the reasons that the
people side is left out very often is that the people’s side of the business doesn’t have
a financial amount, a financial aspect of the business that they can say it costs us X
number of dollars to communicate with people, it costs us X number of dollars to
manage performance, it costs X number of dollars to educate them.
So very often that variable in the equation isn’t included. So they’re after the financial
chase and they don’t really know how much the people’s side of the business is
costing them.

11:32 Tom Floyd Or is necessarily thinking about too what the costs are if for example the company
they’re acquiring suddenly a bunch of people leave.

11:41 Emily Crawford Yes.

11:41 Tom Floyd That hasn’t been messaged correctly to kind of keep them on board and in alignment
with what’s going on.

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11:47 Emily Crawford And knowing that what happens is the merger and acquisition has to re-interview and
rehire their people.

Well I’m hearing the music for our first break, let’s go ahead and go on pause. More
on mergers and acquisitions and how coaching can help when we get back.

14:50 Tom Floyd And where we had left off we had just introduced both of our guests, Emily Crawford
and Tim Dorman and really talked at a high level about why coaching is an important
intervention to consider especially in terms of the people side of the equation.
And kind of continuing along that same line of thought the next question that I really
have for both of you is who typically gets coached during a merger or acquisition?
In other words who are the primary audiences that are key targets for coaching
during a merger or acquisition?
Emily, let’s start with you.

15:41 Emily Crawford Well I’m not sure and Tim perhaps you can comment on this too I’m not sure there is
executive coaching or coaching in its strictest sense where people are given advice
based on information and there’s a plan of development or change or improvement.
I would suspect that there’s more of a consultative approach with the senior
executives, the decision makers, and the people who are going to be closing the deal
so to speak there’s obviously financial advice, there is people advice, there’s
operation systems processes, and a goal that they have to achieve but I think the
advice comes in the form of consultative approaches and they generate a lot of
reports and they’ve generated a lot of data that supports the decision to merge or
buy.
I think some more front line people, middle managers ought to be involved in not so
much the decision but how to execute it and that’s where I think the void is in
coaching employees.

16:55 Tom Floyd So then currently from your perspective a lot of the coaching has been typically done
with executives of both companies so to speak, the company being acquired and the
company doing the acquiring.

17:05 Emily Crawford Yes.

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17:05 Tom Floyd Really working with them but not necessarily focusing more on middle managers and
other folks within the organization who are also impacted.

17:14 Emily Crawford Exactly.

17:15 Tom Floyd Okay, got it.
Tim, what are some of your thoughts?

17:19 Tim Dorman In a similar vein for the merger or acquisition to be effective and for that matter for the
coaching itself to have any value it needs to be fully integrated with the rest of the
merger and acquisition plan, and as Emily stated there’s a piece of that that may be
very consultative in terms of working with a CEO to identify sort of what the optimal
processes might be in terms of handling if you will the people end of the business.
Coaching the CEO in terms of how to communicate most effectively, cascading that
down in the organization to the people who have responsibility for essentially sharing
that message with their respective teams, and making sure that you are also
including the key talent of both firms, both firms, both enterprises who are being
impacted by this organization so that they are not observers they are participants in
the process and it’s a mix of consulting to them relative to roles and messages that
need to be delivered but also coaching to help them do that as effectively as
possible.
Typically those kind of efforts do not cascade down in the organization sufficiently but
the reality is you can take the same approach in terms of working with teams at all
levels of the organization to one to ensure that they have the message relative to the
change that is occurring and their respective roles in it and any recommendations
that they may have to move forward most effectively.
And then on a group basis doing some work in terms of how their particular
workgroup teams can respond most effectively to these changes as work needs to
continue.

19:47 Tom Floyd And how frequently or how common is it for the typical CEO or executive involved in
a merger acquisition to really think I think I might need some help during this, I think I
might need some coaching, I think I could really use some guidance in this.
Do you see that as something that commonly happens or do you see perhaps the
converse in some cases where they might feel you know what this is very hush-hush,
I don’t want any of this to leak out, I don’t feel comfortable getting advice or confiding
in anyone as I’m going through this we’ll just figure it out.

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20:18 Tim Dorman Well I think the reality Tom is that a CEO faced with a potential merger or acquisition
is definitely going to seek counsel from the outside but that counsel will typically take
the place of investment bankers, lawyers, and significantly less frequently that of
executive coach or organizational consultant.
I think therein lies the challenge for some of the reasons that Emily had talked about
earlier that there’s a piece here that is just as critical to the success of the
organization but because perhaps it can’t be modified and in the rush to get things
done sometimes it doesn’t get the attention and resources it should.

Emily, anything you would add?

21:14 Emily Crawford Yes, and during these mergers and acquisitions there’s typically the transitional
process that is developed internally and/or in addition to consultative services from
the investment bankers, from the financial officers, et cetera.
Within this transitional plan there are details in terms of orchestrating sequences of
events that have to take place.
In that is the communication, in that is the plan to execute, and Tim you also said
earlier that more involvement from people will really generate a more successful
merger or acquisition and therein lies the opportunity, is that people who are
executing to this plan should be coached at all levels because every time a new
decision is made that is going to effect execution of this plan it’s going to snowball
into something else, it’s going to if it’s a financial decision it’s going to effect
operations, if it’s an operational decision it’s going to cost money, it’s going to effect
the lives of the people.
So the more involved various levels of executives can be in this execution and be
coached to deliver good messages the better off the merger will be.

22:37 Tom Floyd And how does that coaching really change as you kind of go down in the
organization?
Do you find that it’s typically one-to-one coaching for the CEO and executives and it
involves maybe a one-to-one kind of the next level down then it becomes kind of
group sessions?
Is it only one or two folks that you’d recommend or involve from a coaching
perspective? Is it a team of coaches that come in?
Is it facilitated sessions with managers and employees kind of further down the
chain?
What does that tend to look like?

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23:08 Emily Crawford My experience it looks like very often that managers are coached to coach
employees, and when companies decide to go a little deeper they will offer group
sessions for employees.
So the employees, the frontline people, the managers of those frontline people may
not get one-to-one, they get more group coaching where they’re advised as to how
best communicate, they’re advised in terms of what the plan is and where their part
in the plan is but the one-on-one is usually reserved for higher level executive
positions.

Tim, any thoughts there?

23:57 Tim Dorman The only think I would add is that our experience has been that the most effective
mergers and acquisitions have occurred when people at all levels of the organization
participate early on, not just in the sort of the transfer of information in terms of what
is coming down but very early on participating in what should be traveling up.
So within a respective work group what are their needs, what are their concerns?
They may not know precisely all of the factors behind the merger or acquisition or
what is going to transpire but they do have needs, they do have recommendations.
If you take, and let me give you an example, frequently what you see at the time
around a merger and acquisition is a dropping off in terms of market share between
the two organizations.

24:59 Tom Floyd Interesting.

25:00 Tim Dorman And if you can go to a sales team or a customer service team on the front end letting
them know in general terms what is going to transpire but getting recommendations
from them in terms of how do we maintain the highest level of customer service.
What do you need from us in order to feel good about the work that you’re doing
during this transition?
And so there’s a communication up as well as a communication down.

25:30 Tom Floyd So it’s not just typically, it typically could be followed I guess as one way but in reality
what you’re saying is a lot of successful mergers and acquisitions involve
communication both.

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25:39 Tim Dorman That’s correct, and the coach can play the role of catalyst in making that happen.

Now in terms of kind of what or when the coaching activities typically begin it sounds
like you both are definitely saying that the earlier the better, what does that typically
look like?
So right when the announcement is made it begins?
Does it start before the actual announcement is made and then kind of the next part
of that question is how long is coaching generally needed then?

26:12 Tim Dorman Which of us would you like to proceed?

26:13 Tom Floyd Go ahead.
It doesn’t matter.

26:16 Tim Dorman I think it’s important to remember that in a merger you’ve got change occurring at
different times for different people.
At the time that you go public with a perspective merger at that point it may be old hat
for the Chief Executive Officer who may have been having confidential discussions
for 6 months but it’s absolutely brand new to somebody else, and so if you look at
merger as a change event it’s very important to see where people are in terms of
timing and the coaching that you may be doing with the CEO has nothing to do with
how do you handle the ambiguity of change and everything to do with how do you
communicate most effectively the change that is going to occur.
And then you’ve got other people at exactly the same time are hearing it for the first
time and for them they’re entering a new unknown world, and so the coaching with
them may be how do you respond effectively to change?
What are the things that you should be doing in this brave new world that is
dramatically different than it was yesterday?
So I think it’s important to look at coaching not as a discrete event that occurs at one
point in time and continues for X number of months and then stops as much as a
continuum contingent upon the needs of the respective constituencies.

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Well I’m hearing the music for our next commercial break.
We’ll go ahead and go on pause. More on mergers and acquisitions and the
effectiveness of coaching in these situations when we return.

30:26 Tom Floyd For those of you just getting tuned in today, today’s show focuses on mergers and
acquisitions and how coaching can be helpful in a merger/acquisition situation.
And where we left off before the last break we were spending some time talking
about when coaching typically occurs and who it typically occurs with during a
merger and acquisition.
Tim you really brought up a great point around the importance of change
management and really knowing or understanding where people are in the process,
so for the executives being involved up front if they’ve been talking about it for 3 to 4
months they’ve already accepted that change, they’re aware of it, that’s going to be
new to other people.
And one of the things that came to my mind in that is there’s something that our
company uses called the wave model which a lot of other change management firms
use as well and instantly that popped in my head.
If you think of a change as a wave and the first kind of a four-phase process there,
the first phase that really hits you is denial and shock.
So if you find you that you lost your job for example you’re so shocked about it that
that’s where you spend some time before you can even begin to deal with it.
The next step in the process being anger or defensive retreat; this isn’t happening,
you’re denying it, you’re angry about the change if it was a job that was lost.
Then it’s really exploration; okay, I don’t accept this yet, I’m willing to keep my mind
open to it, and then acceptance and adoption most importantly, okay, I get the
change, I’m dealing with it, I understand where I’m going with this and I’m moving on.
So it’s almost like when I heard you say that you really almost have to understand
where people are by department, by group, or by individual in that process and kind
of coach them accordingly around that.
Emily, any thoughts?
Anything that you would add there?

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32:35 Emily Crawford Yes, I really believe in the work that William Bridges did in his book called
“Transitions”, and one of the key points that organizations have to remember as all
levels of their employees go through this change process is that they’ve got to help
their employees and coach their employees to come to an end about the way it used
to be.
So today we are company A tomorrow we’re going to be company B.
Until you let go of company A and what work was like and how I worked in that
organization.

33:02 Tom Floyd Right.

33:02 Emily Crawford You’re never going to move onto company B and be productive.
So the coaching really has to acknowledge the fact that yes change occurs for
different people at different times and some people are going to get stuck in company
A and they don’t want to leave.

33:17 Tom Floyd That’s almost like they have to be able to let it go first, let it go before they can kind of
move on even thinking about the other thing.

33:26 Emily Crawford Correct.

33:27 Tom Floyd It amazes me sometimes on a personal note the similarities between coaching in this
case and dating, it’s almost like telling somebody okay well I still love my ex-wife or
my ex-husband or girlfriend or whatever and it’s not time to start dating somebody
else yet.
Something like dating for the workplace; well I haven’t let go yet, I was dating that old
company.

33:45 Emily Crawford You’re absolutely right.

33:46 Tom Floyd I had a relationship with them.

33:48 Emily Crawford Before you can move on you’ve got to let go what you had before.

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Well it makes total sense to me.
Well I guess the next question that I would have we’ve covered this a little bit but do
you think from both your perspectives does the type of coaching differ from or should
I say the company that’s doing the acquiring and the company that’s getting
acquired, or does it really come down to the things we’ve already been talking about
that helping people accept the change on both sides and move past it?
Emily?

34:21 Emily Crawford Yes, and again I think it’s going to really depend on what goes on at the front end
and how it’s communicated because what organizations have to look at is is the new
company being the boss, and are they thinking in terms of well we’re buying this
company, this other organization so they’re going to have to assimilate into our
organization?
So what you have to look at is what kinds of communication and processes are you
instituting that will help the two come together?
And pick processes and norms and culture, the good part of what both companies
have to come together to create this third organization.

35:14 Tom Floyd So it can be almost common for some the acquiring company to think no you’re going
to conform to us.

35:21 Emily Crawford Exactly.

35:21 Tom Floyd When the reality is no we’re both conforming to something new and we need to
agree on this new thing together?

35:27 Emily Crawford Yes, and that’s why in our work at the Kabachnick Group we believe in using surveys
and assessments to get to that point because the type of coaching will vary based on
who’s acquiring whom.

35:43 Tom Floyd Now what’s some of the trends in data and things like that that you tend to find from
some of the surveys and assessments that you use?

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35:51 Emily Crawford Well again a strong belief in what we do is right and we believe that the customer or
the product should be developed this way.
We have a point of view of our market share, we have a point of view about systems
and customer service operations, and so what comes out is that the organization who
is acquiring the other organization is imposing everything on the company they’re
buying.

Tim, any thoughts?

36:26 Tim Dorman Frequently even in a company, even in a situation that is being characterized as a
merger there is always a stronger of the two equals and that’s very important to
acknowledge, and many times in a merger while there may be lip service paid to
we’re going to find this new third way the dominant culture of the dominant firm in the
merger or acquisition will prevail.
In those particular cases the coaching that goes on within the dominant party is
primarily going to be around how do you plan and execute and communicate as
effectively as you possibly can.
The coaching that will go on with the company that is less dominant will be one of
how do you respond as effectively as you possibly can, and how can you retain your
identify and control, and how can you secure alignment in this new organization.
If as truly does exist in some cases there is a new third way that is established so
that it’s not one culture or the other that is dominating as much as the new one that’s
emerging them the coaching becomes the same for each.
And how do I take the best of what I’ve done in the past and integrate it into this new
organization and how do I check the excess baggage at the door and embrace the
change that’s coming?
And ideally when you move into an organization that has gone through a merger and
acquisition it’s wonderful to think that you’ve got this new third way that is going to be
the best of both worlds, but at the same time I think it’s important to be pragmatic,
keep your eyes open, and make that judgment call in terms of what you have
because you may need to respond to it quite differently dependent upon what the
strategic direction is.

And in terms of the frequency where you really see one culture that’s really dominant
would you say that’s fairly common where one typically tends to be stronger than the
other or is it really kind of a good mix?

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39:02 Tim Dorman My experience has been that there will usually be one that is dominant that will
prevail.
It may be enlightened dominance, it doesn’t mean that it’s bad at all it’s simply that
one organization will dominate, and I think it’s the exception rather than the rule
where you have an integration of equals and a brilliant, insightful, rewarding third way
established.

And we’re getting close for our next break.
I want to go ahead and slip one more question in before we go to break and that’s
kind of if both of you had to really quickly list out helpful ways or tips that in terms of
how coaching can help companies retain key employees from both organizations as
they come together what would some of your suggestions be?
Emily?

39:59 Emily Crawford I would start with re-recruiting my top players, my top talent, and making sure I knew
who those people were because as soon as there’s an announcement or an inkling
that companies are going to merge most of our utility companies, communication
companies we probably know that’s going to happen before it starts to happen and
having a plan in place to make sure that I the company and the managers in the
organization spend time with top talent because as soon as that announcement goes
out the head hunters and the recruiters are going to start coming out of the
woodwork.

40:37 Tom Floyd Interesting.
And that might not necessarily just be the top talent at the top of the food chain per
se but other key directors, key individual contributors, key engineers, key subject
matter experts that are IT literally if the person leaves that’s going to really effect it.

40:52 Emily Crawford Totally, so include that in the plan of how you’re going to include those people in the
communication and really think about re-recruiting them.

41:02 Tom Floyd Got it. I like that.
Tim, anything that you would add or recommend?

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41:08 Tim Dorman Same thing; get them involved early, seek their recommendations as opposed to
simply sharing your plans, and I believe that our experience indicates that getting
your key players involved in executive coaching that is fully integrated into the rest of
the transition plan is a very pragmatic, tactical, high-yield approach to retaining your
top talent.

41:44 Tom Floyd And kind of if we look at the typical merger or acquisition how may in terms of a
percentage people would you say end up leaving on average during this process?
Would you say its 10 percent, 40, 50, 60?
What does that generally look like?

42:02 Emily Crawford I’m thinking.

42:02 Tim Dorman I have seen situations where 100 percent of the talent that they considered to be high
potential mission critical has been retained in both the acquiring firm and the firm that
was being acquired.

42:23 Tom Floyd Okay.

42:23 Tim Dorman Which is quite extraordinary.

42:25 Tom Floyd Yeah, definitely.

42:27 Tim Dorman And the opposite of that is equally true where particularly after sort of retention
bonuses may have run their course where you will have a majority of your mission
critical people leaving the organization within 6 months.

Well I’m hearing the music for our last break here so let’s go ahead and cut to
commercial and when we get back more on mergers and acquisitions, we’ll give you
a scenario to talk about and we’ll wrap up the show.
Stay tuned everyone.

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45:33 Tom Floyd For those of you just joining us again today’s show focuses on mergers and
acquisitions.
For the last portion of this show what I’d like to do is give both of our guests, Emily
Crawford and Tim Dorman, a scenario and kind of talk about some of the things that
they might recommend from a coaching perspective based on that scenario.
So here’s the scenario so I’ll give everyone a few minutes to think about this; so in a
strategic move to expand and grow its business a production company tells its
employees at its New Jersey location that a press release will be going out in the
weeks to come announcing that the company is acquiring another operation and
moving its headquarters to Orlando, Florida in the next year.
The new facility will be twice the size of the existing facility and the acquisition
supports many corporate goals identified for the fiscal year.
The CEO goes as far as to say that he has received and appreciated the support he
received from the state and county local governments.
Now not a lot of information is given beyond that although the CEO emphasizes that
more information and details will be communicated throughout the organization
through the management chain, and that managers at all levels will be going into a
series of meetings after the announcement is made.
Kind of stepping back from that and turning to both of you.
I’m going to start with the first question here kind of from your perspective what type
of coaching interventions or support should be offered to employees immediately
after that announcement is made?

47:10 Emily Crawford I’d like to start with that one.

47:12 Tom Floyd Yeah, go ahead.

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47:10 Emily Crawford If you don’t mind.
What needs to happen there is first step is to establish criteria for an effective
message about this change because again this may be the first time that employees
are going to be hearing this and that message has to have some very clear elements
to it.
It has to be very succinct, no jargon, communicate, over communicated,
communicated often, and re-communicated, and also includes what the goals are,
what’s the first step?
Where are we going?
Where are we headed?
And they have to be honest about expectations, and it’s really nice if, and very
effective if the communication message includes metaphors and stories, and the
message answers some key questions for employees.
What’s this change about?
Why are we making this change?
Give me some financial information.
Give me some reasons and rationale for initiating this change.
Who’s going to be impacted?
And what are you asking me to do going back to our earlier comments about getting
everybody involved.
If a company can answer those questions and develop and craft their message to
answer those questions I think the organization is off to a really good start.

48:44 Tom Floyd In terms of the frequency you touched on that a little bit right when it’s made, do you
find, are we talking about constant communication, is it daily? Is it weekly? Is it bi-
weekly?
Particularly right after that announcement is made how important is frequency?

49:01 Emily Crawford Frequency, there’s something that’s going to happen every time a task or a
component of this strategy is executed and it’s going to start snowballing into
operations and how people work.
So I’m not sure there is a magical formula, I don’t know of one in terms of frequency
but it may be that my direct supervisor should talk to me everyday for a period of time
until I know exactly how to work differently.

49:33 Tom Floyd Got it. Tim?

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49:37 Tim Dorman People are going to be talking about the merger or acquisition every day, every hour
so really the question is the extent to which you want to influence that, and the
frequency should be driven by that and then I would concur with Emily.
And it’s not so much coaching that needs to occur through an outside third party;
ideally it’s terrific if this can be integrated into how the managers operate and convey
information and also how they themselves are behaving.
But as soon as that CEO makes the announcement of we’re hiring a firm and we’re
moving to Orlando all of a sudden there is a tremendous vacuum and the bottom line
that everybody rushes to immediately be what does this mean for me and how am I
going to be impacted?
And to answer the collective what does this mean for me the CEO has to be able to
communicate effectively, frequently, and with the highest level of trust possible.
This is what we know, this is what we don’t know, this is the process that we’re going
to go through to determine what the changes are, here is our timeline, and I think that
if a CEO and by extension the leaders who are driving that merger or acquisition can
demonstrate and continue to earn a high level of trust among the employees people
will respond in a very effective way.
When there is an absence of trust all of the processes in the world don’t make any
difference.

51:47 Tom Floyd So kind of that lack of trust or once somebody really senses that it’s almost like it can
cause them to shut down in this situation.
In terms of mentioning the importance of managers in this situation and like coaching
and guiding them, how could middle managers continue to guide and support
employees through the transition?
What are some good, key practices for middle managers to keep in mind?

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52:14 Emily Crawford Well I mentioned earlier that you have to give up the old way before you can begin
the new and within that thought process middle managers have to understand that
between the ending and the new beginning there is a hiatus, in between letting go of
the old way and taking hold of the new there’s going to be difficult times and this is a
dangerous phase when systems don’t work very well and people lose heart easily,
and so middle managers have to recognize that they’ve got to perhaps build in some
temporary sources of support and whether it’s having more coaching sessions,
having more staff meetings so that they keep them well informed and they have to
build in these temporary sources so that that trust that Tim was talking about
continues to build.
The more information you have the less likely you’re going to go out and create your
own rumors about what people are going to have to go through or who’s losing their
job or who’s staying with the company.
So I think those kinds of interventions really help organizations maintain their
business during these mergers and acquisitions.

53:36 Tom Floyd Now I had worked with one client I loved the term and communication they did
around this so much that we recommended this idea to another firm that we worked
with.
They actually implemented a Rumor Management Hotline, and that’s what they
called it and that’s what they communicated around.
So it was if you are hearing anything about this change call this number and they had
people dedicated just to kind of saying yes, this is what’s true, no, that’s what’s not
true, this is what’s going on around that, and I really liked that.

54:07 Emily Crawford Great, great tactic.

54:09 Tom Floyd Tim, any thoughts there?

54:11 Tim Dorman From a very tactical point of view what’s important to remember is that it’s not
business as usual, it’s business as unusual.

54:19 Tom Floyd I like that.

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54:21 Tim Dorman And as such it’s going the extra mile to communicate both through formal rumor
hotlines and in terms of informal accelerated management by walking around and
staying in touch with people, and within your respective work teams that you’ve got
responsibility for focusing equal amounts on both the professional and the personal,
what is the work that we have to get done?
How do we maintain the highest level of customer service in this time of extraordinary
change and uncertainty?
How do we do that?
And how can we help each other?


55:00 Tim Dorman And let’s acknowledge that all of the problems that we have on an individual basis
and find ways to support each other in that effort.

55:09 Tom Floyd Got it, excellent.
Well a huge thank you to both of you for joining us for today’s show.
And as always I want to say thank you to all of our listeners for spending time with us
today as well.
For more information about our show you can look us up on the Voice America
Business Channel, you can visit our website at www.ieconsulting.biz, and you can
also feel free to shoot me an e-mail me at tfloyd@ieconsulting.biz .
Don’t forget you can look us up in Apple iTunes as well for the podcast version of the
show, just go to Music Store and enter Insight on Coaching in the Search field.
Thanks again everyone, we’ll see you next week.

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Managing Through Mergers And Acquisitions Transcript

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