In those cases, transition teams are a farce. Mergers are never business as usual. The best acquirers are realistic. Expect the senior team to level with you. But if there's no communication, that's a very bad sign.
Success hinges on people getting the work done.
And people don't perform well when they're kept in the dark. The faster you make the break with your company's past, the sooner you start contributing to its future. Jeff Janer knows that firsthand. At the height of last fall's merger frenzy, iXL, an Internet business-solutions firm acquired both LMP and Spinners, an Internet technology company. Then iXL merged its two acquisitions to create iXL's Boston office.