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It’s often said reputations are hard-built, but easily destroyed. And in many ways, the same can also be said for cultures (company cultures that is).
But what about starting a company culture pretty much from scratch – but with people already used to being part of a different (much larger), corporate culture?
Joy Burkholder Meier
General Counsel & CHRO, Black Duck
This was precisely the challenge that has recently been faced by Joy Burkholder Meier, General Counsel & CHRO at Black Duck – the new entity that formed after a $2.1 billion carve-out acquisition from US conglomerate Synopsys Inc, by two private equity companies, Francisco Partners and Clearlake last summer.
The deal saw the 20,000-employee Synopsys Inc. sell off its 2,000 staff-strong Software Integrity Group. The group was re-named Black Duck (referencing the group’s existing Black Duck Software Composition Analysis tool), but this legacy name was really all there was to the spin-off. What the newly-created private company really needed was a brand new culture and identification. No easy task!
Brought in to oversea the transition
“I was initially brought in during the spring of 2024, to start laying all the necessary HR preparatory work that would be needed,” says Burkholder Meier. “This was everything from HR systems, benefits systems, new payroll, that type of thing; with the planned completion date due for the end of September 2024.”
Although the first priority was to ensure everything that needed to work on day one of Black Duck did – from staff sign-ins, to IT systems, backend systems etc. – what soon became apparent was that this new, much smaller company was a very different one to the big corporate that the existing staff had previously been with.
On the one hand, the exciting bit was that we were all suddenly a new company, able to do things much faster, and without all the friction a traditional company brings. But on the other, people needed some form of identity
“While most people weren’t overly worried about the change-over from the point of view of what it meant for their jobs [people pretty much carried on doing what they did before, says Burkholder Meier] – what they were anxious about was what the new business really ‘was’ and what it stood for.”
She adds: “Although the brand name was familiar, people feared being part of a much smaller entity; that there wasn’t much brand recognition, and that somehow a new culture needed creating. On the one hand, the exciting bit was that we were all suddenly a new company, able to do things much faster, and without all the friction a traditional company brings. But on the other, people needed some form of identity.”
