“I’d encourage anybody at any company to look into the BLUECASE training. It’s going to lead to better communication across their employees, across their departments, across their executives, and it’s going to improve each person who does the training from a personal standpoint as well.”

Stephen Erickson, Chief Administrative Officer & General Counsel

The Problem:

Based in Austin, Logix Fiber Networks provides fiber internet services throughout the state of Texas. After acquiring another telecommunications company, Logix had begun to face cultural challenges as they attempted to integrate this other large team with their own. The disparate teams had adopted an “us vs. them” mentality that had created a poor working environment.

According to Matt Murphy, Co-Founder of Astra Capital Management and then-CEO of Logix,

“We had some friction across our leadership team with a few folks who were leading big swaths of the company and simply couldn’t communicate with each other. […] It had gotten to a point where they didn’t have a constructive relationship at all.”

As a result of these challenges, friction echoed down to other team members throughout the company, with employees continuing to use old company names even years after the acquisition. Astra and Logix got in touch with BLUECASE to iron out the differences across the leadership team and build employee engagement, as we’ll see throughout this case study.

The BLUECASE team stepped in to provide a variety of coaching solutions, including company-wide leadership development through the ILF program, as well as executive and group coaching to foster greater communication across these teams.

Our coaching focuses on creating a shared language within the company that becomes the foundation of a shared company culture. This enables teams to break down silos and barriers to communication, gaining a better understanding of each other’s strengths, tapping into core motivations, and relieving tension and stress throughout the company.

The Results:

After years of tension, BLUECASE was able to quickly resolve differences between key leaders on the executive team. 

“Really in almost the first couple of sessions that we had with BLUECASE, with just the senior team, we were able to really start addressing [the friction] and it was really impressive,” said Matt Murphy. “It was great to see.”

The leadership team was then able to be instrumental as we moved on to coach key groups of employees throughout Logix. We worked to foster greater engagement, improve morale, and eliminate silos—metaphorically “burning the old company jerseys” and equipping the entire company with shared mindsets, practices, tools, and shared language to unite the company and proliferate the new unified culture as they grew.

BECOME ONE COMPANY.

Friction between leadership teams is virtually inevitable during the mergers and acquisitions process. However, even differences that seem intractable can be resolved by using the right tools and developing a shared language and culture.