Managing Change Successfully

Dowload Culture Change Overview [PDF]

Managing change well is a central factor in the ultimate success of any company. Like a hockey puck sliding across a smooth piece of ice, the dynamics of change move quickly and constantly, making it hard to know where to focus. More often than not, organizations suffer through change. Inattention to the organizational and human aspects of change is often the culprit. Even strategic initiatives that make good business sense can fail because the leadership, workforce, company systems, and culture cannot evolve in alignment with each other.

The good news is that handled well, corporate change can be creative and enormously constructive. At Mobius Executive Leadership, we help leaders to understand the underlying features of successful business transitions. This includes assisting them to make wise choices to meet immediate business demands while keeping a firm grasp of the strategy and longer-term corporate issues. Our extraordinary consulting team fosters reflection and strategic action on the essential issues companies must confront in building their enterprise.

When we partner with organizations around change, the initial step is diagnostic. We first work with people in companies to create a thoughtful and accurate picture of the current situation. From transitioning to new leadership and embracing a new strategic vision to implementing new policies that alter the previous company culture, each situation must be recognized for its potential as well as its challenges. This assessment is often impacted by the source of the change, as a re-organization that responds to an economic downturn creates different effects than one that reflects a new corporate strategy for growth.

Once we share a common picture of current reality, our consulting team then works with internal partners to envision a path forward. Over time we adapt our approaches to fit emerging dynamics, modeling a mode of constructive performance under conditions of uncertainty. Many change processes stall or fail because leaders don’t address the fear and anxiety that change brings. In addition to strategic, operational and behavioral guidance, our team pays close attention to the mood and culture of the firm. During times of transition we help people cope with the strain and inevitable setbacks of change as well as assist them to maintain a sense of hope and possibility for the future.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Merging business entities together is a particular kind of corporate change that brings its own dynamics, challenges, and opportunities. In order to capture the potential value of a shift of this scale, as well as to ensure fundamental operational success, it is essential to have a thoughtful and strategic plan for integration on multiple levels.

Mobius Executive Leadership takes a comprehensive approach to consultation in the design and implementation of mergers and acquisitions. In the best circumstance, members of our team enter a situation before the terms of a deal are final. This allows us to set an organizational foundation for the new entity as well to assist companies to structure the most optimal deal. Where most negotiators typically leave value on the table, our experts advise parties about ways to find and capture that value.

Once a deal is done, the significant challenges of integration quickly emerge. More often than not, post-merger organizations do not reach their potential. At a minimum they don’t capture the potential synergies of merging their assets together, and in many cases, they simply fail altogether. Like other areas of corporate change, inattention to the organizational and human aspects of change undermines the opportunity offered by bringing independent entities together. More often than not joint ventures that could have produced significant value fail because human beings cannot achieve or deliver the gains that spreadsheets predicted. Specifically, the inability to merge values, cultures and norms frequently de-rails attempts to join companies together. From the financial valuations of a deal to fostering a shared and functional company culture, Mobius consultants have unique expertise to help separate businesses successfully combine into a new, integrated whole.