Organizational Behavior, 12th Edition

Ready About: Don't Lose Your Bearings

Mark Berns has a flair for navigating treacherous waters.

A passionate sailor, Berns also heads Ready About, a consulting firm that guides companies through potentially disruptive changes, such as strategic realignments, mergers, and acquisitions.

Plans for organizational change often look lucrative on paper and meet resounding approval at the highest levels of management. But they can go awry when they fail to account for a company's intangible–but often most valuable–assets. These can include group or corporate culture, operational strategy, and trusted avenues of internal communication. It doesn't help matters if key employees resist the coming change because they resent the strategy or don't have enough information about what's going to happen.

“If culture is a company's DNA, acquisitions are a bit like gene splicing. You want to combine the best of both worlds so you don't end up with Frankenstein, Inc.”

–Mark Berns.^b

Enter Ready About, named after the command a captain issues to make sure his crew is ready to chart a new course. Berns and his team help organizations thrive before and after big changes. They specialize in organizational strategy, team effectiveness, and mergers and acquisitions.

Whether brought into a company to manage change or keeping in close contact as a consulting partner, Ready About makes sure companies stay watchful ...