This is an observation post primarily to do with the insurance industry, because large parts of it have grown by acquisition. Many large insurance corporations grow by acquiring companies that have a stake in the line of business they are interested in or are potential competitors.
Obviously, this happens in other industries as well, but it is particularly common in insurance.
One of the key differences is that insurance and finance companies often acquire businesses that are already doing well. So, if you are doing really well and making good money, there is a good chance that a larger corporation will go, “Oh, they have the market sorted. They have an excellent product”, and will purchase you.
This leads to an odd dynamic inside any given corporation.
When something comes down from the group or parent company, there is often a great deal of pushback from former subsidiaries. The key reason for this, which I think is often missed, is that each of these subsidiaries were and are quite capable of standing on their own two feet.
They might not have been big, but they were holding their own, and they were growing.
They didn’t ask to be acquired.
They were taken over, and a lot of the personalities inside those smaller companies were the ones driving that growth. They were taking bold, leading decisions, and now they’re being given orders where they don’t think they need them.
They are effectively big boys and big girls who have moved out and are running their own lives. But, for some reason, their parents have forced them back into the family home and are now telling them what to do.
And they don’t see why they should listen.
In fact, a large proportion of them will look at the larger corporate environment and think, “Well, our way is better. I’m going to fight back and try to make the way I see things going forward the future of this corporation.”
And that is one of the core reasons we get such fierce political conflicts inside corporations that have grown through acquisition rather than organic growth.
So, next time you are working with, or trying to get your point of view across to, a sub-brand or subsidiary within a corporation, realise that for a lot of the time, the people you are talking to are successful in their own right and did not ask to join the same company as you.
They’ve been doing quite well for themselves, and the corporation can come out stronger by taking all the views of the different parts and merging them into a unified whole.