The Challenge
Nicole thinks, "In the newspaper, this merger of Ultra and Mega sounded great. But if I have one more person from Ultra tell me how spoiled we Mega folks were, I think I'm going to scream!"
No matter how sound the business reasoning behind a merger, if the newly combined firm doesn't act quickly to identify the new culture and move toward it, harmful clashes will persist. A lingering "us vs.them" attitude creates communications problems, reduces productivity, fosters power struggles and can result in loss of key talent to competitors.
