The First 90 Days (63 page)
Authors: Michael Watkins
Tags: #Success in business, #Business & Economics, #Decision-Making & Problem Solving, #Management, #Leadership, #Executive ability, #Structural Adjustment, #Strategic planning
Accelerating Postmerger Integration
The transition acceleration model has also been used successfully as a driver of postmerger integration, during which many people are in transition simultaneously. Its impact goes beyond accelerating individual managers into their new positions, however.
When organizations collide, the two populations effectively start out speaking different languages. Culture clashes are often as much about language as they are about values. Misunderstandings generate conflict, which undermines the integration process. The transition acceleration model is a new language that both organizations can learn together.
Employing Performance-Support Tools
Finally, you might consider using Harvard Business School Publishing’s online performance-support tool, Leadership Transitions (
www.harvardbusinessonline.com
), as a resource for introducing the transition acceleration model into your organization. You can make the tool available via the Web to everyone in your organization, regardless how geographically decentralized. The tool provides a wealth of supporting diagnostics and tools that new leaders can use on a just-in-time basis to accelerate their transitions. The tool was deliberately designed not as a course but as a flexible performance-support resource that new leaders can draw on when they need it. Thus, you can employ efficient blended approaches to cascade the model down through an organization. A typical configuration is an initial short (half-day maximum) face-to-face or Web conference introduction to the transition acceleration model and the online performance-support tool.
ACCELERATION CHECKLIST
1. Whose transitions would you most like to accelerate? How might you begin?
2. Would a structured new-leader assimilation process help to accelerate you and your new team?
3. What can you do to better support the transitions of people who come in from the outside?
4. Should transition acceleration be part of your organization’s curriculum for developing high-potential leaders? How might different types of business situations be factored into succession planning?
5. Could the transition acceleration model help smooth the integration of acquisitions?
6. Can you leverage the transition acceleration model through adoption of an online performance-support tool?
