Get others involved
The actual process that was undertaken to resolve the technology issue and the resulting barrage of communication also played a role in fixing the cultural confusion that was hampering the company that was trying to come together.
“While we had this thing called technology, in the background, were still all of these cultural dynamics and something as simple as trust,” Bedford says. “You may be the new owner, but the employees still don’t know you from Adam. They have no basis to trust you. It’s not that they don’t trust you, but you have no track record with them on what you can say.”
Employees were confused about what they were supposed to be doing and Bedford needed them to start working together as one cohesive unit.
“We had to get the management team talking and functioning together and build the management team up so they could actually continue to run the business and then push that communication down to the front-line employees,” Bedford says. “So we pulled together some management committees to just look at the three different companies in terms of their policies, procedures and operating practices and really decide, ‘Let’s just pick the best of the best and have everybody do it the same way.’”
Your approach is critical to making this work. Even if you’re the one acquiring the other company, if you come off like you’re dictating how things are going to be done, you’re just asking for trouble.
“If you happen to be an employee of Frontier and your manager comes out and says, ‘Hey, we’re changing procedures,’ your manager can respond one of two ways. They can say, ‘Republic told us to do it this way.’ Or they can say, ‘Well, we sat down as a group and looked at the three different practices and we all agreed that this is the better way and here’s how it’s better.’ You can get management to buy in to the changes and sell the changes and understand that employees will ask questions and deserve thoughtful answers as opposed to, ‘Well, this is how Republic told us to do it.’”
It’s another step in bringing two or, in this case, three, different cultures together into one. That’s not something that typically happens on its own.
“The expectation was that they should just automatically behave the same way we behave,” Bedford says. “Not understanding the psychology of an acquisition, the management teams at these companies were fearful of how they could operate.”
It may seem obvious to you that you want the managers of the company you’re acquiring to continue to act like managers, but in the case of Republic, it wasn’t.
“We had to reassure them that they were in fact part of the team,” Bedford says. “We very much valued their contribution. They needed to manage and lead directly as opposed to waiting for us to tell them what to do.”
This effort takes time and Bedford says it has still hit a few speed bumps along the way.
“We’re clearly spending a lot more one-on-one time with employees to answer their questions so they understand that we are listening to them,” Bedford says. “We want them to see some measured change based on their feedback.”
Bedford says it’s a matter of building the trust and respect that everybody needs to truly feel part of a team and not like an outsider. That teamwork is important for the team itself but also for the way your employees interact with customers.
“Our employees are already working hard,” Bedford says. “But working hard is different than being passionate about what you do. A passionate employee is going to create that emotional connection with customers that we desire.”
