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What is your vision of the sort of organisation which can result from bringing these two entities together?

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Does senior management (if this is not you) have any overriding objective for the merger?

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How can you make the vision compelling for the vast majority of your people?

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How can you make it meaningful for support staff?

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What competitive reference can you provide?

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How are the cultures of the two organisations different – use dimensions of style and values to assist the analysis?

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What are the good features of each of the component organisations that you want to carry through into the new one?

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Can you prioritise them?

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Anything you wish to explicitly reject?

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Who are the members of the senior team from each group who can help you bring this vision to reality?

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What do you need to do to get them on board?

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What are the strengths/weaknesses of the proposed team?

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Are there any senior misfits and what can you do about them?

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Does the team have balance from the two organisations?

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Can/should you do anything to improve the balance?

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What specific roles can you assign to each of the members?

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How can you best bring them together to create the merger plan?

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What sequence of Management Action is required/preferred in order to deliver the new organisation structure and over what time period should this be achieved?

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At each step what internal communication challenges arise and how would they best be met?

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At each step what external communication challenges arise and how would they best be met – Who?  What?  When?  How?

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Along the way how are you answering the redundancy question?

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Do you have any aspirations/instructions for how you want your team to behave in carrying out this task?  How will you best communicate these?

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What are your expectations of how long it will take for the merger process to take its course and how are you expressing them?

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What will be the dimensions of success? Financial? Cultural?  Competitive?

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Can you identify any quick wins?

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How can you ensure that the vision remains compelling once the merger period is behind you?