On Work with Karen Mathews following Merger of Two Heritage Companies with Multiple Sites…

Bill Breeden
Senior Manager of Engineering and Test Lab System
LOCKHEED MARTIN

“Thanks to Karen Mathews we get more done in less time with less strain.”

I hired Karen Mathews to help my organization to become more fully blended following a merger of two heritage companies and locations into one company with two locations. She interviewed each of the management staff, anonymously, to start, so they could feel safe to bring forward their true concerns and issues. There were more benefits with this approach than I could have predicted—my team understood I am honestly interested in knowing their perspectives. It really gave them an opportunity to be heard and to get things off their chest.

“I knew if I had asked them they would likely answer with what they thought I wanted to hear.”

Mathews prepared the cumulative results and presented them to the team. This opened up a conversation to address what she called “the elephant in the room.” It was through looking together at the truth, with Mathews’ guidance, that we gained a common understanding. Together we could understand and overcome the resistance to a merger that happened three years ago.

“I got a true gauge of where we were with the merger, the obstacles that we were facing, and a true opportunity to address them.”

We are in a time of tremendous change and moving to a new way of doing business at two locations. My job is to drive everyone toward the same goal and ensure that everyone understands the objective and will surface pitfalls that I should be aware of. Effective communication is essential to this end and we couldn’t have gotten there without Mathews’ guidance.

“We had done off-sites in the past but this time the barriers to understanding each other were removed, the lines of communication opened up and we are now more fully blended as one organization.“

Karen Mathews also helped us develop a protocol for our meetings going forward. These tools have proven to work in our daily routine as a reminder of our commitment toward respecting each other. It saves me tremendous time and takes less energy to manage the meetings and it makes us more effective during our meetings.

“I know that building a collaborative environment for my management team not only makes for a better place to work, it also helps to develop better solutions and is better for the enterprise. Karen Mathews was central to building that collaborative environment.”