Communities of Practice - the untapped resource for post-merger integration

Why do mergers that are intended to reduce costs or increase revenues often produce just the opposite result?

The reasons are many but I believe an important one is that the involved parties are frequently too involved with issues of finding the right and compromises, and don?t enough attention to the emergent, self-organizing possibilities of the merger. A friend of mine and author of The Intelligence Advantage,Organizing for Complexity, Mike McMaster wrote:

"If we understand that the natural state of living entities is to create new possibilities that are greater than any extension of the past would indicate, then we can begin to design processes that not only move quickly into positive ground but create something that is beyond what was imagined before they began to merge.

What shows up in these new processes is new thinking, new approaches, new energy and commitment - and new opportunities emerging from re-combinations (learning, sparks, new knowledge) and from ?adjacent possibilities?. That is, things occur both for increased performance and for new market opportunities that couldn't be seen before the differing knowledge and perspectives were brought together."

The benefits of an integration strategy that includes provisions for supporting the merger?s emergent possibilities, are increases in innovation, integration, and employee engagement.

What does it take to achieve them?

Some of the essential conditions to achieve them are:

• Identify people from both organizations with the most passion for learning and sharing what they know.
• Map and support existing communities of practice in both parts of the company with shared, enabling infrastructures.
• Identify areas of strategic capabilities that can be boosted by learning and development in communities of practice, existing or yet-to-create.
• Provide for expert facilitation of learning and development processes within and across strategic communities of practice.
• What other issues need to be addressed if the power of communities of practice is to support the integration efforts?