Merging three
organisations
Three organisations were planning to merge and were keen to avoid the
difficulties of previous mergers and to make this a smooth a transition
as possible for all involved.
Amicas used symbolic modelling to facilitate the leaders of the three
organisations to first determine their own personal values and then to
clarify what they individually wanted in the future organisation. Their
three very different models (a group of beehives, a willow tree and an
Olympic team), allowed them to understand what was important to each of
them and to identify what conflicts could result from a clash of values.
With this knowledge, they creatively negotiated a model of the future
organisation (an enlightened United Nations) which incorporated all their
key values.
With facilitation from Amicas, they took the model to a cross-section
of managers. Given an explanation of the “enlightened UN”, the
managers stayed within the structure of the metaphor to produce refinements
to the model, such as the role of ambassador, export-import arrangements,
and internal sharing of surpluses. Then they produced crucial questions
that would require more research, such as local versus federal decisions,
and relationships with other nations. Following this, they translated
the metaphor into the reality of the future organisation.
As a result of this work, the model, or metaphor, provided a common understanding
and shared language with which to achieve the goals. Issues could be simply
explained to staff, clients and suppliers, and organisational structure
could be agreed with minimum conflict or detail. |
