Merger Challenge: Unite Toothbrush, Toothpaste May 8, 2007
Posted by Brian Mulligan in Merger, Organizational Culture, Organizational Environment.trackback
The article that I found in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Merger Challenge: Unite Toothbrush, Toothpaste – P&G and Gillette Find Creating Synergy Can Be Harder Than It Looks“ directly relates to company culture conflict. Many thought that the merger of the world’s No.1 toothbrush and the world’s No. 2 toothpaste would provde to be a match made in heaven.
The rosy picture painted by most anaylsts turned completely grey once the companies actually tried to merge together. Oral-B employees were forced to move from Boston to Crest’s Cincinnati hom office, while there was a clash of management style. Oral-B favored meeting while Crest liked memos. In contrast, Crest liked deliberated moves while Oral-B liked quick decisions.
“Gillete staffers had to learn to cope with P&G’s famously rigid culture”
In th end, both companies have to deal with all of the problems that they are having with each other. How do you propose a compromise? What is the best solution?
Do you ever feel like this just seems so trivial, that somehow smart people all get stupid once they have to make real decisions?
Great title.
Solutions: have a sleep over all together and then the next morning brush teeth together. Practices matter more than policies.
Want to start your private office arms race right now?
I just got my own USB rocket launcher
Awsome thing.
Plug into your computer and you got a remote controlled office missile launcher with 360 degrees horizontal and 45 degree vertival rotation with a range of more than 6 meters – which gives you a coverage of 113 square meters round your workplace.
You can get the gadget here: http://tinyurl.com/2qul3c
Check out the video they have on the page.
Cheers
Marko Fando
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Incompetency.