Germany Business Case

The biggest problem in my work environment in last year was to manage a successful integration of a new German business into our Division. The Germany business which will be referred to as MAT going forward in this paper was merged into our business in late 2012. From the beginning it was clear that MAT was not interested in becoming part of a new Division but rather enjoyed the freedoms of maintaining a standalone business status. During the first few months after the merger the Divisional leadership team made numerous trips to Germany and worked countless hours to sort out numerous issues from lack of market share penetration to product line mismanagement.

As the Global HR Director I took a different approach to the problem. It was evident that no matter how many executives visited the MAT business within weeks of their return the same problems surfaced. The heart of the problem was not in the processes but rather the MAT leadership themselves. It was the leadership team that cultivated the idea to remain separate and purposefully kept the Division out of the communication loop on critical business issues. It was time to approach the problem at its source.

Starting in January 2013 after months of this behavior from MAT I decided if something was going to change it was going to have to be attained by setting clear goals and accountability beginning at the top of the MAT organization. In situations like this I understand the importance to be systematic and take one issue at a time along with preparing myself to be patient. In any organization change begins at the top so that is where I started, a new Managing Director was appointed to oversee the MAT Business. This has proven to be a disruptive move to the MAT business which was the intent. The new Managing Director was not new to our company but new to MAT so he could see opportunities for improvement very quickly and so started the ripple effects of change.

Once we had a new Managing