After an acquisition, the bean counters step aside and the value they hoped to create often starts falling apart.

There are many possible reasons for that; in this post I want to address one salient reason: the middle managers of the acquiring company start to bully and mess around with the middle management of the acquired company.

• Example from VP of marketing to VP of Marketing in acquired company: the presales material is not up to our standards; please submit all future material for review before posting on web site.
• Or take this example from Head of Travel to Travel Coordinator of acquired site:  your employees must fly out the same night that work ends, this being the case until 23.00 at night. The airline of choice is the cheapest airline available. All ticket purchases to be done 8 days in advance.

And I could go on and on.

Why does this bullying occur? Clearly some of it is merely clarifying lose ends left over from the acquisition. But that’s the least of it.

For the middle management of the acquiring company, an acquisition is often a pain in the ass: working at strange hours (getting up at 6 am to speak to an Australian); or listening to hard to understand accents (Thai, Japanese, Chinese). The middle management of the acquiring firm may need to manage arguing Israelis, Taiwanese or Dutch, passive aggressive Indonesians, or “apparently obedient” Thais. Often the middle management of the acquiring company need to make a power grab to insure their own job security, lest they lose their jobs to better skilled counterparts. And often-it’s just a pissing contest.

But worst of all, there is a mindset of “I acquired you” so “do what I tell you”, as if the middle manager has acquired the asses with his own “stifa” (Hebrew slang for wad of money).

So, what is to be done?

That, dear readers, is another post.