American Dreaming - 1990's / Part IX

During this project I received my first taste of the mergers and acquisition game. It was announced shortly after the project was started that my organization had merged with the number two managed care firm in our market. In this market, it was widely accepted that the organization that I was with was the number one managed care firm. After the merger we (the combined company) put a pretty large amount distance in market share between my company and the nearest remaining competitors.

At first, I didn’t pay much attention to this news but, in time, this change would involve me in some pretty interesting corporate decisions and actions. Shortly after the announcement of the merger, I was contacted by one of my counterparts within the IT organization of our now sister company. In not too many words, I was told that they were now in charge of the internetworking aspects of the combined company and that I should prepare my staff to relinquish control of all of the switches and routers within our network because we would be receiving replacement units to comply with the networking standards of their organization. I replied with “Not bad, how are you?”

I immediately conferred with my COO and was told that we would be meeting to discuss this matter with other members of our corporate IT function. The meeting was setup and in the interim, I continued with the project in NY City.

The first meeting with these folks took place in their (former) headquarters in rural Connecticut. I was instructed to bring along an inventory of the equipment we had installed in all of our regional offices as well as the equipment that we had in our management schemes within the corporate data centers.

The meeting was rather abrupt and brief but the message was crystal clear. It seemed to be that within the combined company my staff and I would be taking direction on technology choices from the IT management functions of our former rival. We would be tasked with arranging for the replacement of the entire networking infrastructure within the Troy, NY and New York City offices (in time). Shortly after this meeting it was also announced that the former CEO of our company was leaving and the new CEO would be the former head of the sister company we were merging with. All of this added up to massive changes in our corporate structure and precipitated a lot of defections in the ranks of our company. What seemed at first to be good news and perhaps an avenue to new and exciting challenges had become the harbinger of very bad news for a lot of the co-workers and organizations we were familiar with.

We managed to finish the installation of the operating unit in NYC (using our former standards to set up all telecommunications functions) as there wasn’t enough time to involve the new sister company. Shortly after that office “went live”, another major initiative was announced and I was thrust right into the middle of it.

---Jim