Anything but simple and straightforward.

This is a mea culpa - I did not read the HBR case prior to Monday's class and so was a bit disoriented by the conversation and role play. I was grateful to be assigned a minor role - John Tucker SVP Marketing - at least for the purposes of the recontracting discussion but really eager to catch up on the case after I finished an exam in a different class on Wednesday.

HBR had me at "simple and straightforward"....

In a prior HR role for a company that grew significantly through acquisition, I spent a portion of 10 years working on due diligence reviews and then activities related to harmonization of benefit plans and human resource policies. Susan should have listened to her gut when it started to question whether it really could be as simple as it appeared. But she understood Mr. Kellogg to be a "forceful leader who could plow through anything and make it work." This was her first misstep - forceful leaders may be good for many things - a merger is not one of them. I found that you needed to put their force to work on the customer, the future and the business plan of the combined companies. They are welcome to issue initial platitudes about "rowing in one direction" but cut them off before they can spit out the words "a merger of equals." Get the forceful leaders as far away from the people in the boat as possible. (Disclaimer - I don't know if the commentators chosen by HBR provide similar or different insight in Part II - I am purposely waiting to read it until after I finish this post.)

I would also suggest that Susan and Statler Company should have recontracted as soon as they discovered the level of differences between the Kellogg and Champion policies. First as Block suggests, they've just discovered that the presenting problem is not the real problem and most importantly, it certainly cannot be addressed according to the terms that the client had set forth. I see that this "do over" is supported by Block in the steps he lays out for collecting the data on page 190. "Step 2: Deciding to Proceed" would have encouraged a review with Kellogg prior to the interviews to confirm that sufficient motivation exists to keep moving forward. In process consulting, the goal is action and not research. Research is only going to give Susan and Jim more of the same... force from the Kellogg team, indignation from Champion, and continually disparate policies and procedures.

But, this then presents the best takeaway from this case, at least for me. Kellogg clearly wanted a pair of hands. M&A work is often pair of hands work, especially for the HR team who are sometimes invited to participate only after the finance and corporate development teams have decided the deal is a "go". Can we still apply some of the principles of process consultation in our efforts?

I see the redefining of the presenting problem as a critical skill and the habit of breaking it apart into technical and managerial problems equally beneficial. It may be in this process where we can be of most help to our clients, even when we find ourselves in a pair of hands role.

There are certainly recommendations that can be made to address the technical problem of disparate policies and procedures. The trick for Susan and Kellogg-Champion will be with the managerial problem. The disparate cultures and managerial processes will still need to be addressed. As soon as Susan is able to call attention to that and to name the resistence on both sides of the fence, the whole lot of them can come to new and better terms. Susan and Statler also need to lead Mr. Kellogg and Mr. Carpenter to some soul-searching about the cultural aspects of merger. There are some critical principles of change management that would greatly benefit not just the teams at Kellogg-Champion but the leaders themselves. Only under those conditions could you let them back near the people in the boat.

I don't know if Susan will survive this step of the engagement but I'd have to be proud of her for trying.