As a technology leader, Wipro works with many companies to ensure a smooth melding of IT
“People are our most important asset.”
It’s the kind of verbiage that appears on mission statements and value propositions in corporations and institutions around the world, because people deliver products, services, and experiences; people turn strategy into results. And when people work in a culture that empowers and inspires them, they do great things.
For many executives, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are driven by the numbers, the cold, hard realities of revenues, profits, and balance sheets. But, the best and most successful M&A deals are driven by “an appreciation of the importance of people and an awareness of the immense uncertainty people experience in the midst of an M&A.”
As a technology leader, Wipro works with many companies to ensure a smooth melding of IT and business process landscapes through our post-merger integration practice. Wipro has also built a team focused on talent and change management because “The typical cause of failure for an acquisition is neglecting people and culture.”
Align, Engage, Enable
The Talent and Change team at Wipro know how to approach and manage these kinds of large-scale enterprise organisational change challenges, by focusing on three big themes:
Align: Define roles and establish governance models, work with program sponsors to define a compelling vision, and prepare business leaders to own and support the vision so they set the tone from the top.
Engage: Use a persona-based approach to assess groups and create transition journeys targeted to specific persona needs, underpinned by specific support and events to prepare all teams for the change ahead.
Enable: Cultivate and reinforce behaviours that support new ways of working, and build a network of change influencers to inspire, reinforce and provide crucial actionable insight.
Here’s how this worked out with METRO AG (a German company that wanted to strengthen its focus on its core wholesale business and decided to spin-out two subsidiaries focused on digital and IT, METRO-NOM GMBH in Germany and METRO Systems SRL in Romania.)
It was critical that pre-Day 1 and post-merger integration activities would be supported with robust change management interventions. Wipro’s organisational change management team is human centred in its approach, so the project team could focus on the acquisition’s design and development. Wipro’s involvement started several months before the acquisition “went live.”
In M&A situations, planning for the human consequences of change and disruption can make a tremendous difference at both the enterprise and employee levels. But, experience and expertise in organisational change management can add value during any kind of restructuring or strategic shift because people really are “the most important asset.”
Learn more about Wipro’s organisational change management expertise and our Talent & Change team here.
