PMI – Vision & Leadership

Key Issues

• Definition of core values
• Roles and responsibilities
• Organization structure
• Strategy development

Forming a new vision for the merged organization is one of the most crucial step. The vision must be clearly understood by each employee of the new organization. Each employee must be clear about the kind of changes the new vision would bring to their jobs. The role of the leadership becomes very critical in forming the new vision and communicating it throughout the organization. The leadership and specifically the CEO must be able to articulate a vision, which clearly states the mission and values the employees as well as the customers are going to share. The new vision must be able to create a synergy between the employees of the two organizations who come from different cultural backgrounds.

The role of Leader who’s in charge of acquisition process and her leadership team is very critical. The first things is about knowing people of both the companies who are directly getting affected of the merger process. Such personal connection would help her build the intuitive feel for the business as well as for the people running the business. This is also the way to foster honest dialog, the kind that can sometimes leave people feeling bruised if they take it personally.The leader’s personal involvement, understanding and commitment are necessary to overcome passive (or in many cases active) resistance. She has not only to announce the initiative but to define it clearly and define its importance to the combined organization. She can’t do this unless she understands how it will work and what it really means in terms of benefit. Then she has to follow through to make sure everybody takes it seriously. Again, she can’t do this if she can’t understand the problems that come with implementation, talk about them with the people doing the implementation and make clear – again and again – that she expects them to execute it.

Realism is the heart of successful PMI but many people, who are responsible for PMI, try to avoid or shade reality. Why? It makes life uncomfortable. They want to hide mistakes, or buy time to figure out a solution rather than admit they don’t have an answer at the moment. They want to avoid confrontation.

Embracing realism means always taking a realistic view of the integration process. Accepting the challenges ahead and make it goal of all dialogues in the organization.