Case Study:

All aboard the Mothership

Introduction

The initial leadership team at Galactic Empire, an application performance management and IT operations/analytics company, had a strong sense of purpose and established clear goals to innovate, increase revenue, and build the customer base. As the company matured, the needs of the company shifted to preparing for a looming IPO in 2017, and, two days before the IPO, Galactic Empire was acquired by The Mother Ship.

Symptoms

Galactic Empire was faced with a challenge of identity: culture and expectations were no longer driving towards market share or IPO, but rather maintaining steady-state operations. This absence of a concrete vision, in turn, affected individual performances, focus, and drive.

Diagnosis

Given that the prevalence of personal satisfaction with the work done at the Galactic Empire contrasted with the overall disdain for less proximal leadership, we believe that the evidence reflects disengagement with the MotherShip corporate identity primarily due to two factors: a poorly communicated long-term vision for the Galactic Empire team post-acquisition and a trust deficit with leadership magnified by a lack of communication and behavior conflicting with what is communicated.

Solution

The key to successfully remediating this disengagement is for intermediary-level management, between the executive suite and the local product/engineering teams, to align the culture of Galactic Empire with the post-acquisition strategy, and then continually reinforce these new cultural norms through verbal, written, and demonstrative communication with the product/engineering teams. We recommend management recognise that for any change to be successful, especially a change as big as an acquisition, it is imperative to be mindful of the effects of the change on people that will be adopting it.