A Leadership Story
We need to merge two organizations and modernize IT?
The CEO worked tirelessly with the Board of Directors
and the executive team to successfully acquire an
organization which would double their size, extend their
reach into a neighboring state, and provide the
opportunity to modernize their operations. One of the
biggest challenges was how to modernize IT while trying
to merge the two organizations.
Following Intelligence Catalyst’s Discover, Design, and
Engage (3-step) approach, the initial step was to
Discover with the CEO, executive team, and talent
throughout the organization to discover the
opportunities, challenges, risks, and options to merge
the two organizations while at the same time. The goal
was to identify what is working, what is not working,
gather ideas, to learn and absorb as much as we can.
With the data, information, and knowledge documented,
we worked with various leaders, key resources, and
stakeholders to design the path forward. During the
design sessions, insight and wisdom were used to help
interpret and shape the plan and priorities.
Once the merger and modernization plan was
completed, announcements were made, a kickoff
occurred and it was time to engage at all levels of the
organization. Throughout the weeks and months ahead,
the focus was on prioritizing the changes needed at that
moment of time to bring the organization and its
customers closer together and aligned as the
organization rallied around the vision of flowing of value
to the customer. Starting with the smallest teams,
services, and products, the lessons learned on how to
evolve to become more product oriented were more
quickly realized with minimal risks or impact of change.
The customer realized that by leading their evolution,
following Intelligence Catalyst’s guidance, that they
could control the ebb and flow, the velocity and rate of
the merger. This was different and new for the
organization. In past mergers, the merger would take on
a life of its own and the leaders felt like they were at the
mercy of the changes… that the merger was controlling
them.
Prior to the merger, there was an assessment of the IT
abilities in each company which indicated a strong
requirement to modernize. The approach would be to
take the elements of IT which were working, shape
them to best support the flowing of value to the
customer, and build out any gaps. Intelligence Catalyst’s
real-time experiential approach, provided the leaders
and managers of the merger and modernization effort
the capability to understand, prioritize and receive what
they needed, where, and when they needed it to
transform, evolve, and nuture. This approach resulted in
increased transparency of why things needed to evolve,
minimized disruption, retention of talent, and a
modernized IT capabilities flowing value to the
customers.
One aspect of the merger / modernization effort was to
evovle the organization’s culture and mindset to now
include Continouse Improvement (CI). As a result, the
merger / modernization plan was now viewed as the
first iteration of many to come. The organization is now
continously learning as it continously monitors and
reviews its ablity to flow value to its customer.
Intelligence Catalyst understands mergers and
acqusitions are complex… that retaining and applying
talent and intellectual property, or what is commonly
refered to as the crown jewels, are key to success. This
is why Intelligence Catalyst believes our immersive real-
time experiential approach can help you succeed. We
hope we have the opportunity to help and look forward
to helping you with your merger and acquisition needs.