The document discusses strategies for integrating two teams that have merged through acquisition. It recommends that the teams (1) acknowledge their diversity and find common ground, (2) build empathy, patience, trust and respect, and (3) identify shared cultural elements and commit to collaborative working styles to create a cohesive combined team.

1. What to focus on to help better integrate
two diverse teams that have come together
owing to a merger or acquisition?
Bhaskar Thyagarajan
Co-founder CEO, BlueSky Learning

2. • Two teams of an organization, one of which has just been
acquired are coming together to discuss matters of
integration.
• This provides a great opportunity to help each team
understand the diversity they bring and find common
ground to begin the process of integration.

3. • The team members are new to each other and the
conversation will help drop barriers and build a positive
proclivity within the team.
• Get the team on the same page on some of the key
attributes of a cohesive team which is key to driving the
same across the whole Organization.
• Create a sense of camaraderie and a familiarity within
the team, a key foundation to be building a strong sense
of a team.

4. • The team has to find commonalities in their differences -
culture, working style etc., as a starting point of
becoming one team.
• The two teams need to start working towards a common
vision for the combined entity.
• Bring Inclusiveness in their working style and behaviour
towards each other.

5. • Building a foundation of Trust and Respect for each
other.
• All this leading up to establishing a collaborative style of
working and a shift in the culture of the team from the
past to the present.

6. The Day should be spent to get the team to
interact, engage and explore to find the common
ground that they will stand on while their
differences exist.

7. 1 Acknowledging Diversity, its source and impact.
2
Empathy & Patience to drive an Inclusive style of
working.
3 Foundation of Trust & Respect for Interdependencies.
4 Identifying commonness of Cultures & behaviour.
5
Creating a collaborative culture & committing to
Shared Ownership.

8. When a team understands that there will be diversity in
any team that comes from a different milieu/culture,
and this is expressed and acknowledged, everyone gives
each other space and demonstrates patience.
And when this happens, teams start seeing the value all
these diverse ideas actually add to the team and their
output.
Then diversity becomes a strength rather than a source
of conflict.

9. The only way the leaders can guide the team is by
demonstrating extreme empathy, with different people
facing different directions requiring independent
attention and patience from the leaders.
Highlight the effort required by new and diverse
members to be non judgmental and patient to foster a
feeling of cohesiveness.

10. It must be highlighted that one is no more an island and
needs the support of others to succeed.
The foundation of respect for each others roles and
abilities comes from this realization which is beyond any
cultural nuances.
Reciprocity of trust & respect foster’s team spirit.

12. • The focus should be about finding commonalities of
culture and identifying and agreeing on what is the
common culture everyone would like to subscribe to.
• There is a huge Venn diagram that is created on the wall
with 2 overlapping circles.
• From the culture passbook, both teams first need to find
the common culture elements that are positive and place
them in the area where circle A intersects circle B.

13. • Then from the list of positives of both teams, the group
deliberates and adds the elements from either, that they
believe, deserves to be a common culture pillar.
• This helps create the common culture pillars of the
integrated team.

14. The inability to hold any one person responsible when a
block is lost highlights the fact that the true test of
collaboration is in dealing with the greys that occur in the
day to day work of a team.
Aligning priorities and taking initiative and ownership for
the goal and asserting oneself to make it happen will also
create a collaborative culture

15. Islands of innovation and creativity don’t help as the end
result is not achieved till all the elements come together.
It forces the team to have a common focus on rigour,
creativity, end goal and high quality of communication.

16. Thank you
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