Change Management for Employees in Mergers and Acquisitions

Excerpt from The Employee Handbook for Organizational Change

Control your attitude.
Take some ownership of the changes.
Choose your battles carefully.
Be tolerant of management mistakes.
Keep your sense of humor.
Don't let your strengths become weaknesses.
Practice good stress management techniques.
Support higher management.
Invent the future instead of trying to redesign the past.

Control your attitude.

It’s understandable that a person would be upset or disappointed about certain aspects of the changes. But how long should you let these feelings go on? Two weeks, six months, a year? Are you going to hold a grudge for ten years?

W. Clement Stone, the former president of Combined Insurance and the author of numerous books, said, “There is very little difference in people. But that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative.”

You can concentrate on what’s going wrong, and become preoccupied with things that are aggravating and upsetting. Or you can be a “change agent” and throw your energies at correcting problems. So get caught up in the new directions of the organization. Seize this chance to learn and grow. Choose—deliberately—to be positive, optimistic, enthusiastic. You will benefit far more than the organization will.

“I was going to buy a copy of
The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought:
What the hell good would that do?"

—Ronnie Shakes

Take some ownership of the changes.

In today’s world, business as usual is business as unusual. That’s the norm, not the exception. Change has become the new status quo.

Consider a central part of your job description to be . . .