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The Cranky Middle Manager Show #088 (MP3 11.5MB 33:38Min)

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Welcome to the show, a really cranky chat with HR strategist Corey Sherman of the HR Strategies blog about why mergers, acquisitions and re-orgs so often crash and burn. A little venting this week- have fun.

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Show Notes

0:00 Welcome to the show. Today we’re going to vent about why mergers and acquisitions usually don’t work.

This week’s episode is dedicated to Charles “Chinese” Gordon, and to Muhammed Ahmad, better known as the Mahdi of Sudan. Two sides of the same coin. Talk about a merger that didn’t work and never had much of a plan. Any relationship between this situation and anything going on in the news is purely coincidental- just like every other time in the last 200 years we’ve tried it. But companies don’t seem to learn from history either.

3:32 The quote of the week is from Sun Tzu- the man knew a little about strategy and even he wouldn’t have tried the HP-Compaq merger.

4:52 Welcome Corey Sherman of Strategic Planning Associates. He’s not a big fan of mergers and acquisitions. neither am I, but I’ve been reorged, merged or acquired 7 times in the last 11 years so maybe I’m just bitter. So what’s the logic that makes smart companies believe they’ll succeed where others fail?

7:17 Come on, you know why you listen…we use the word Anschluss in a sentence, who else would do that? But it’s a great description of what happens when you push two companies together. Corey tells a great story about a merger where the integration task force is made up of the same managers who drove both companies into the ground in the first place. Good thinking huh?

9:59 “Corporate Culture” is thrown around a lot, but what does it actually mean? Mergers usually make cultures turn inwards, as opposed to out towards the customer. And guess who’s usually caught in the middle? That’s why they call us middle managers, baby.

13:08 A sadly familiar story of what happens to good managers in bad mergers. Sound like anyone you know?

19:20 Reorgs are just Mergers and Acquisitions without money changing hands. Nothing says failed strategy like reorganization. Check out my blog about this from a few months ago…

Oh, and here’s another chance to bash HR.

25:52 When all the chaos is over, are you left with your best people? I tap dance on the line between stereotype and observation. So what else is new? But why are people the last things considered if they’re your greatest resource?

28:40 Oh and customers don’t enter into the conversation much either.

Resources:

HRStrategyblog.com

Society of Human Resource Managers

International Association of Business Communicators

And on a completely unrelated topic, Corey’s brother hosts a podcast here on TPN-

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