Easy reads

#44 Systemic Elegance (with Mieke Jacobs and Paul Zonneveld)

Paul Zonneveld and Mieke Jacobs are the co-authors of the recent book Emergent, which brings a systemic intelligence lens to the questions of how organizations get into and ultimately resolve complex challenges, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions.

Paul and Mieke have both spent decades working with the question of how to help leaders and organizations thrive. What surprised me most about this conversation was the deep attention to history that systemic intelligence brings to these questions of thriving. As Mieke said to me offline, just as human beings store trauma in our bodies, impactful or traumatic events in companies are stored in their visible and invisible structures. These events still show themselves in the internal relations and in the organizational culture.

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Source: mindfulcreative.coach

How to Approach Your L&D Integration Strategy After M&A

Before considering a collective onboarding of an acquired partner, four systemic questions should be asked.
The merger or acquisition (M&A) agreement has been signed and communicated, top leaders have shaken hands, the integration team is established, day zero has arrived. What is the best approach to collectively train and onboard the new employees fast? is often the first question raised to the Learning and Development (L&D) function.

As a result, functional heads, HR, and L&D join forces and start drafting a learning and development swim lane to be added to the tactical integration plan, including technical skill building, vision and values workshops, and leadership bootcamps.

The new kids on the block typically are not involved in the design and get overwhelmed by all the training initiatives. Even if there was initial excitement about the merger or acquisition, they soon may start to feel subject to a hostile takeover. As they lack the company’s history, context, and “do’s and don’ts,” it is unclear which battles they can fight and what not to touch. Most importantly, many of the large training programs turn out to be expensive yet ineffective; well-intended but counterproductive. The new employees do not buy into the new company narrative and become disengaged. Critical talent walks out the door and takes their technology or customer relations base with them.

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Article Author:
Mieke Jacobs and Paul Zonneveld

Source: www.trainingmag.com

The questions to ask when everything is unknown

Systemic intelligence is an indispensable skill for business leaders.
In the chaos of the COVID-19 crisis, the normal executive agenda has been overlaid, leaving leaders facing deep questions they were formally not attending to. In the space of just a few weeks, its become starkly clear that there are no simple solutions in our interconnected world.

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Source: managementtoday.co.uk