Merging fish with an oil tanker

It’s easy to think about the megamergers between telecom vendors of the last few years in terms of mere dollars and euros, product lines and business groups, sales channel and R&D synergies. But the creation of companies like as Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU), Nokia Siemens Networks (NYSE:NOK, NYSE:SI) and Sony Ericsson (NYSE:SNE, NASDAQ:ERIC) involve much more than what strategic planners have put on paper.

The components of these huge corporate ventures aren’t start-ups that are absorbed into the culture of their new corporate parents. These are companies with their own long histories and strong senses of identity suddenly foisted upon one another from different parts of the world. They have their own corporate languages, their own business practices, their own style of management, their own way means of dealing with crises. In short, they each have their own cultures, and by merging these, megavendors can’t just slice and dice their core values like product portfolios to get the optimal cultural result. They have to create a new culture and identity.

How most of these companies have tackled their cultural issues and reconciled the differences of their parts still largely remains a mystery. It’s easy to see the operational results of a merger of equals — product lines cut, portfolios merged, offices consolidated, factories closed — but the cultural results are veiled. NSN, however, allowed Telephony to peek under the veil for a few moments, giving us access to some of Nokia’s key executives and consultants during the merger and integration.

That glimpse reveals two companies that in one sense have an enormous amount in common due to their Western European and engineering heritages, but in another are on opposite poles when it comes to the way they practice their trade. On one side is a German vendor with a highly stratified structure that, at its best, has clearly defined objectives and tight execution, but at its worst gets bogged down in formality. On the other side is a Finnish vendor with a culture advocating flexibility and self-organization, which at its best gave Nokia Networks the ability to adapt to any situation, but at its worst invited chaos. When NSN’s new integration team asked U.K. consultant Adrian McLean to provide them with images that summed up the cultures of NSN’s two parts, he came back with two striking pictures: an oil tanker and a school of fish.

I encourage you to read the full piece, titled “Creating Culture,” in Telephony’s final issue before the launch of our new magazine, Connected Planet. I don’t just say that because I wrote the piece. Researching and interviewing for the article provided me with a fascinating look into the workings of a company that are rarely made public. NSN executives not only acknowledge the differences between their parts, but they go into detail about the process and obstacles toward reconciling them.

E-mail me at kfitchard@telephonyonline.com.