How did a company acquisition feel like for a product designer
Three years ago, during the hard Covid lockdown in The Netherlands, the news arrived at our company; we were going to be acquired by a competitor. At that point, my reference to company acquisitions was Meta buying Instagram or movies depicting evil corporations pushing local shops into bankruptcy. I had no idea how common mergers and acquisitions are all around the world, across many industries. Naturally, questions piled up in my mind: Will I still have a job? Will my colleagues still be around? Will I be replaced by their own designers? Will we lose all the hard work we’ve put to get the product where it was?
Reflections on the Acquisition Journey
It took me a few years to look back at what happened during this acquisition journey, objectively; the way it affected me as an individual and as a designer, and the way it shaped the emerging organization. Here are a few reflections during that process, and a few things I would’ve done differently that may help others experiencing this.
It all started on the wrong foot. I’ve severely underestimated the importance of this change, trying to ignore it as much as possible. In the end, the company went through acquisitions before I got there, and it looked like they did just fine. Why bother then? I’ve kept my focus on ongoing projects, peeking out behind my laptop to listen to a few announcements, assuming we’ll get an email or two, and nobody will bother us anymore.
Impact on Roles and Reporting Structures
As one might expect, the first to be affected were executives and senior management. These higher-up role changes used to sound like a high stakes version of musical chairs to me, hoping that the people I know will still be around by the time the music stops. Instead of disregarding this, just looking into the new reporting structures could’ve helped me get a sense of mid-long term focus in the organization. Luckily, my ignorance was only followed by a positive surprise, since things changed for the better.
Implications on Design and Leadership
In the past, engineers, data analysts and designers were all mixed and mashed at the leadership level. As a result of the acquisition, each function got individual leaders with specialized expertise, thus roles had better representation on a higher level, scaled accordingly, with unique approaches for career paths. Imagine a less positive scenario though, in which design is given less presence in the company at the leadership level. Looking at other functions that experienced this, it would’ve affected my freedom to take on initiatives, my involvement in strategic discussions and ultimately my growth.
Biases and Decision Making
Using a mix of frameworks, open data and comparative user studies, the consensus was that their consumer-facing experience was falling behind. The acquisition added a layer of subjectivity to this conclusion. It only took a couple of months to notice a change in some people’s attitudes, with strong or even harsh views softening up. Unfortunately, I did not find a way to surface these observations to the larger audience, without overcoming my fear of polarizing them, having to facilitate discussions at a level I wasn’t comfortable with, back then.
Insights on Data and Decision-Making
As obvious as it may sound, data provides the best argument in these cases, not only to guide an objective path forward. I could’ve tried to combine as many sources of knowledge as possible, e.g. sales numbers, customer care topics, qualitative user research findings, market analyses, or just blame the process and say it’ll all be done later by others. Unfortunately, what I noticed is that if very little data is involved, there is a risk important decisions will be heavily driven by biased arguments, by a majority or by politics building to please the new organization, rather than users’ needs.
Adapting to Organizational Changes
The behavior that surprised me the most was not resistance to change, rather instant embrace. Requests like updating presentations to match a new style guide, supporting marketing teams efforts, replacing assets in flows, using new templates for files, did not feel like a priority to me, while we were undergoing large organizational changes. Eventually, they did contribute to a feeling of unity, but could’ve been done at any time.
Collaboration and Communication
One aspect, which I wrongly classified as busy work in the beginning was collaborating with people outside of my immediate reach. Honestly, helping them felt like an uphill battle in the beginning, at times wondering whether putting effort in translating their data and terminology into user needs was worth it. In the end, working together to express their concerns brought up critical aspects in the user experience that we would’ve missed otherwise.
Embracing Company Values and Culture
Treating an organizational event of this magnitude almost like a new job might sound like a hassle, but also forced me to take a decision: commit to stay or move on. I stayed, not fully convinced in the beginning, but willing to give it a try and see what they’re all about. I realized after a while, that it’s not only about the words and materials used to express these, but more about their adoption. If a company manages to inspire people to adopt high level values in their daily work, in their own individual way, it’s doing something right.
Throughout this process, I also learned that the new company was less mature in adopting product development and design processes, but they committed to improving this moving forward. Another question was forming in the back of my mind: I can work with this, but am I willing to spend the next years going through similar pains just to reach the same level of maturity? Or is it time to move to a place with these things.
