Management Lessons Learned Inside a Merger

Being a manager during a company merger is a bit like being handed a puzzle where half the pieces are still moving.

This post isn’t a takedown or an exposé. It’s a reflection. A personal account of what I learned from the inside. If you're leading a team through change, I hope this helps you feel a little less alone and maybe a little more equipped.

TL;DR

• Mergers bring uncertainty, but clarity, structure, and trust can anchor your team.

• Language matters: shared words shape shared ownership.

• Strategic decisions should come from perspective, not pressure.

• Change must be communicated early, clearly, and often.

• Managers don’t need all the answers, but they do need to show up.

• Structure + humanity = stability during chaos.

Lessons from the Merger Trenches

Strategy Needs Perspective and Space

When big changes happen, like merging two products or platforms, it's tempting to jump straight into execution to work on that ROI asap. But strategy needs space and perspective.

The best strategic planning happens where you can weigh what’s valuable and the what can be discarded, alongside long-term outcomes, and customer impact, without getting tangled in internal politics or emotional attachments.

Ideally, planning happens with input from neutral facilitators, people who can evaluate from outside any one team’s context or history. This helps avoid turf wars and rushed compromises that may slow things down in the long run.

Change Management Must Be Intentional

One of the biggest takeaways I’ve had as a manager is that change, especially at the organizational level, needs to be rolled out with care, structure, and intention.

Change doesn’t start with a new org chart or roadmap. It starts with communication.

There’s a simple rule: first, you explain the change. Then you leave time for people to process it. Only after that do you start the transition.

In practice, that means answering the key questions clearly and early:

1. What is changing?

2. Why is it changing?

3. When will it happen?

4. How will it affect my role, my team, my goals?

5. And importantly: what’s expected of me during the transition?

This kind of communication isn’t a one-time email, it’s a process. It requires bringing people in early, giving them room to understand, question, and adapt, and inviting them to help shape the path forward.

A bad thing you can do is make decisions over people’s careers and lives without involving them, but the worst is to tell them that you will involve them, and then not do so.

When people feel informed, involved, and respected, they’re far more likely to embrace change, even when it’s hard.

Change management isn’t just about reducing resistance. It’s about creating a sense of shared direction, and giving people the psychological safety to move with confidence instead of fear.

Shared Language Can Create Shared Ownership

At first, it was easy for people to fall into "us" vs. "them" language: our product, their feature, their way of working, our way of working. That’s natural when two organizations come together, but it can be super toxic if it’s left unchecked.

One of the smartest and most intentional cultural moves I witnessed was leadership, including managers and team leads, consistently correcting that. We encouraged each other to speak in terms of team X, system Y, our products.

“It helped us own our successes and failures as one team. If something went wrong, it wasn’t because of ‘them’, it was ours to learn from. That created psychological safety in a high-stress environment.”

More than just language, it gave us a way to believe we were building something together, not just surviving side-by-side.

Silence Leaves Room for Rumors

When communication slows down, speculation speeds up. Rumors fill the vacuum.

Rumors eat away at morale. They quietly undo your best efforts at motivation, trust, and alignment.

As a manager, I’ve learned that over-communicating is almost always better than under-communicating. Even if the answer is, we don’t know yet, saying that out loud helps people feel included and considered.

Layoffs Are Hard, But They Don’t Have to Be Mysterious

It’s hard to talk about layoffs. But avoiding the conversation doesn’t make it easier for anyone. If layoffs happen, and especially if they come in waves, people need clarity.

People can accept hard news. What breaks them is feeling like they’re just numbers in a system.

When we’re transparent about what’s driving the decisions, whether it’s financial, strategic, or performance-based, people are more likely to stay engaged and constructive, even in grief or frustration.

Mental Health Needs a Place on the Agenda

During the most chaotic months, it became clear that the normal rituals of engineering and product work weren’t enough. We needed human rituals, too.

We were all stressed about things we couldn’t control, so we created a study group. A space to think, talk, learn. Not about the merger. Just… something else.

It wasn’t about escaping reality. It was about remembering who we are beyond the org chart.

Managers don’t need to be therapists, but we can hold space for healthy coping. And that starts with acknowledging what people are feeling.

Managers Anchor People in Structure and Humanity

The most stabilizing thing I could do for my team during all of this was to provide some kind of structure, something predictable in a very unpredictable time.

That meant being clear on goals (even short-term ones), focusing on the goals and projects over which we have clarity and can execute on, being present in 1:1s, and being honest about what we did and didn’t know.

People need structure. And people need to feel like they’re respected as people.

Sometimes it meant setting aside non-work time together. Other times, it meant clearly visualizing the three sprints ahead, assigning clear ownership, and celebrating accomplishments along the way. And consistently, it meant acknowledging stress, talking openly about morale, and sometimes it just meant saying, I know this is hard, and I’m here with you.

Final Reflection

This wasn’t a perfect transition. But it gave me some hard-earned clarity about what people need during change: structure, transparency, and emotional honesty.

If you're a manager walking through a merger, an acquisition, or even just a big reorg, my advice is simple:

• Give people something to hold onto.

• Don’t hide the truth, they already feel it.

• Show up as a human, not just a function.

And remember:

Change doesn't kill culture.

Silence does.