Let’s be honest, most CHRO groups out there are bad. They are expensive, filled with vendor pitches, and loaded with “fluff” resources that are outdated by the time they are published. That’s why I put together Future of Work Leaders. A CHRO group for people leaders who are moving beyond traditional HR to focus on the future of work and employee experience. No pitches, no selling, no fluff.
The community is focused on discussions, candid Q&A sessions, and sharing of resources and insights. Members include Lego, Novartis, PwC, Saks Global, and dozens of others. I’m just in the process of planning our annual in-person forum which will be at the end of March. if you want to learn more and request an invite go to Future of Work Leaders or email me directly Jacob[at]thefutureorganization[dot]com.
Merging company cultures during an acquisition is one of the highest-stakes challenges a leadership team can face. Get it right, and you unlock exponential value. Get it wrong, and you risk destroying the very thing you paid for.
This was the challenge confronting Peter Johnson, SVP and Head of Talent and Culture at NRG. In this episode, he shares the company’s own deliberate shift away from a traditional view of HR.
The task ahead of him was monumental. NRG, a 5,000-employee power company, was acquiring Vivint Smart Home, a deal that would triple its headcount to 16,000 overnight. The acquisition was a bold strategic pivot, designed to transform NRG from a low-engagement utility provider into a high-touch smart home technology company with daily customer interaction.
But the market’s reaction was brutal. Wall Street hated the deal, and an activist investor publicly called it “the single worst deal” in the sector in a decade. Against this backdrop of intense skepticism, Peter and the NRG leadership team had to navigate a complex cultural integration, learning a series of powerful lessons that offer a playbook for any leader tasked with blending teams, systems, and identities.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!
Here are the key lessons from how they balanced cultural preservation and strategic growth during a high-stakes acquisition:
‘Don’t Crush the Butterfly’: When a Hoodie is More Than a Hoodie
The first and most visible culture clash became apparent the moment NRG leaders stepped into Vivint’s Utah headquarters. While NRG’s corporate offices adhered to a standard “business casual” environment, the Vivint office was a sea of “shorts, baseball caps, hoodies and sneakers.” It was a classic tech-versus-traditional-industry divide, manifested in fabric.
While some leaders might have seen this as a compliance issue to be corrected, one prescient board member offered a piece of advice that became a guiding principle for the integration:
“Don’t crush the butterfly.”
The lesson wasn’t about enforcing a dress code. It was about recognizing that the casual attire was a symbol of the agile, engineering-driven culture that produced the very innovation NRG had paid billions for.
Forcing total conformity would have meant crushing the very spirit that made Vivint successful. The real wisdom was in knowing what to leave alone. This principle has been so thoroughly embraced that NRG’s CEO now makes a point to wear a hoodie and sneakers when visiting the Utah office, a clear signal of respecting and preserving cultural identity rather than erasing it.
Never Explain the ‘How’ Without the ‘Why’: A Change Management Minefield
After observing the surface-level differences, leaders next had to tackle the complex technical integrations. NRG faced the challenge of merging two massive HR systems: its own SuccessFactors and Vivint’s Workday.
From a purely logistical standpoint, the decision was clear. NRG’s SuccessFactors was deeply entangled in a “spaghetti soup” of downstream systems, making it far more complex to unplug than Workday. The “plumbing” dictated that moving everyone to SuccessFactors was the most practical path.
The change management team executed flawlessly on the logistics. They communicated timelines, system blackout periods, and new processes with precision. But they made one critical mistake: they perfectly explained how the change would happen but completely failed to explain why the decision was made.
The impact was immediate. Vivint employees, who were “very passionately about Workday,” felt frustrated and confused. To them, a superior system was being replaced for no apparent reason, which felt arbitrary and dismissive. This created unnecessary friction and eroded trust early in the process.
This tells people leaders that in any change initiative, the rationale is just as important as the execution. Employees are capable of accepting a difficult change, but only if they understand the logic behind it.
If you’re involved with or leading employee experience initiatives at your company and you’re not a CHRO, then check out Employee Experience Leaders. When I created my CHRO group I received over 1,500 from non-CHROs who wanted to join an EX community, so I decided to create one. It’s launching in March ONLY for 150. You’ll get access to monthly Q&A sessions with CHROs, officer hours with me, a monthly EX newsletter, and online community, and more to come!
If you’re ready to stop guessing and start building with a true peer group, we’d love to have you at Employee Experience Leaders.
Job Titles Aren’t Just Labels—They’re Emotional Currency
While miscommunicating a systems change created frustration, the next challenge hit an even more personal nerve: harmonizing job titles. As NRG discovered, an employee doing the same job with the same compensation might be a “VP of X” at one company and a “Senior VP of X” at the other. This isn’t just a semantic issue; business titles are “very personal,” “emotional,” and represent an “unspoken hierarchy” within an organization.
Ignoring these inconsistencies creates a ticking time bomb for compensation. A person with an SVP business title but a VP-level pay grade will, in six to twelve months, inevitably point to their business card and demand SVP-level pay. Failing to address this early on creates long-term compensation chaos that becomes exponentially harder to untangle over time.
It’s crucial to confront title and leveling disparities as early as possible, even if it requires difficult and delicate conversations. It is a problem that only festers and grows more complicated with time, undermining efforts to create a fair and standardized internal structure.
Listen to the episode here on Apple Podcast & leave a review!
Ditch the Venn Diagram: Build New Values from the Ground Up
While navigating sensitive issues like titles was a crucial defensive move, NRG’s leaders knew they also had to go on offense to build something new. When it came to merging corporate values, they refused to simply find the middle of a Venn diagram. Instead, they “kind of blew it up” and embarked on a deliberate, 18-month journey to build a completely new set of values for the combined company, under the banner of “1NRG.”
This wasn’t a top-down mandate. The process was intentionally inclusive: it began with the C-suite, was then workshopped with the top 300 leaders, and was finally tested in focus groups with employees to ensure the new values resonated and felt authentic.
Crucially, these values weren’t just put on posters. They were embedded in the company’s operating system. Each executive recorded a video explaining what a specific value meant to them, and the new values were integrated directly into the rewards and recognition system.
Building a truly unified culture requires creating a new “north star” together, not just patching together old frameworks. The slow, intentional process built far more credibility and buy-in than a rushed announcement ever could have.
Follow the North Star (Even When It Costs You 25% of Your Stock Price)
With a new cultural foundation taking shape internally, NRG leadership faced its biggest test from the outside. The external pressure on NRG following the acquisition announcement was immense. The company’s stock price fell 25% between the announcement and the deal’s close, and the move attracted the attention of activist investor Elliot Management Group, which issued a scathing public letter calling the acquisition:
“…the single worst deal in the power and utility sector in the past decade.”
The firm demanded a comprehensive review of management and strategy—including the company they had just acquired. Despite this intense pressure to reverse course, the leadership team “stuck to their guns.” They held a deep conviction in the long-term vision and refused to be derailed.
Their conviction paid off. From the low point after the deal closed, NRG’s stock has soared approximately 420%. More importantly, employee net promoter scores (eNPS) have more than doubled, from 20 to 41, signaling a dramatic improvement in internal morale and engagement.
In a difficult transformation, leaders must stay relentlessly focused on their “North Star.” It is critical not to get “overly discouraged or distracted by lots of outside forces” and the chorus of naysayers.
From Backlash to Breakthrough
In the end, the most complex systems, the most detailed project plans, and the most sophisticated financial models are secondary to the one element that determines success or failure: the people.
As Peter Johnson’s experience shows, the hardest and most important part of any integration is preserving the “human energy” that keeps employees excited and engaged through disruptive change.
As you face your next major integration, are you truly prepared to listen for the unspoken cultural signals, or are you just focused on the systems and the spreadsheets?
Discover how to protect your organization’s human energy and lead through high-stakes change. To learn how you can turn public skepticism into a massive financial and cultural triumph, check out the full episode below.
