A Note: this post was written by a guest writer, and does not necessarily represent my opinion. That said, I think it’s important to host a variety of thoughts and perspectives on the blog and thus, I give you the following article written by Jake Adger of SuccessFactors. It is in response to an earlier guest post entitled “From Our Research: Teamwork is a good thing. Sometimes” As always, please feel free to comment, we want to know what you think.
A book I read over my recent vacation brought up an interesting idea – task specific competency requirements. This is a very intuitive idea but one that doesn’t seem to be embraced by the job competency models that are often implemented by HR. A recent post by our own Erik Berggren on the SuccessFactors blog pointed out that teamwork is a competency that is more important in some tasks than others.
Discussion of the complexity of successful M&As in Winning by Jack Welch focuses mainly on the relative importance of teamwork in M&A situations. He says basically that a merger of equals is impossible because forming such a team of equals leads to paralysis in merger integration. In merger integration situations there is always a balance between heavy handedness by the acquirer and consultation with the acquired company. Too much heavy handedness can kill the culture and decimate the talent pool of the acquired company. Too much consultation can lead to indecision and wasted time.
This brings up an interesting – though intuitive – point in that competency requirements can easily vary based on the task at hand. The most successful executives such as Jack Welch are probably able to reflect on their own well developed competencies and experiences to determine which competencies best fit the task at hand. This can be extremely difficult for many people.
I know that several companies have formed dedicated merger integration teams. These teams may have specialized skills such as financial planning, business process design, etc. An interesting question is whether these teams are also picked based on a different mix of more fundamental qualities. These team members should be focused on results but should also have enough emotional intelligence to balance the competing requirements of maintaining the culture, engagement, and talent pool of the acquired company. The same results might be achieved by staffing these teams with very different individuals for a portfolio effect. Companies with successful histories of merger integration are few and far between but I’m sure that highly specialized competencies held by their merger teams have a lot to do with their success.
