Tuesday 16 June 2009

Merging buildings? Re-assign offices from scratch

When Lockheed and Martin Marietta merged their headquarters into a building previously occupied by Martin Marietta, they moved everyone out and reassigned offices from scratch. This avoided the impression that anyone had been bumped or that some people were more important than others. That action was critical from a social standpoint. "The attitude 'we bought you' is a corporate cancer." (Source: HBR article, 1997)

Same thing with P&G:
Following the P&G acquisition of Gillette the day came for Gillette staff's site merger into P&G's offices.Tarek Farahat, P&G's country general manager, arranged that when people arrived at the facility on Monday morning nearly everyone from both companies were in new offices on new floors.

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