Conflict Management and Post-M&A Integration for Tech Companies
I work with tech companies when people dynamics start costing them delivery.
That can mean post-M&A integration that stalls across teams and sites, recurring conflict inside R&D teams or between managers, or working conditions that make it unnecessarily hard for good people to do their jobs. I also work on neuroinclusion and on the workplace integration of employees returning to work after PTSD or military trauma.
When do companies bring in an outside consultant for team conflict?
In tech teams, people dynamics turn into operational risk long before anyone calls them a people problem. The visible conflict is often the symptom. Underneath it there’s an operating model built for a different structure, roles nobody redefined after a reorg, or working styles nobody ever put into words.
What it tends to look like from the outside:
- the same disagreement comes back every quarter, with different words
- decisions escalate to the top because peers have stopped trusting each other
- people do exactly what’s asked and nothing more
- a strong engineer turns “difficult”, and their manager can no longer reach them
- two sites or two legacy teams work around each other instead of with each other
Why does post-M&A integration stall after the deal closes?
The deal closes. The org chart gets redrawn. On paper, two companies are already one. The people aren’t yet.
I help connect acquired R&D and product units: work through resistance, keep the specialists and expertise the deal was actually for, and define boundaries and interfaces between teams without erasing the autonomy that made them work in the first place.
Two acquisitions, two different answers
In two acquisitions running in parallel, I met the same fear: that once the knowledge was handed over, the teams would lose their autonomy — and maybe their place in the company. But each team defended its territory differently. With the German team, we built a translation layer on our side. With the Icelandic team, we agreed on the APIs and left their product a black box. Two ways to connect systems without breaking what already worked.
What does neuroinclusion mean in practice?
It means adapting working conditions and communication to how people actually work — for neurodivergent employees, including people with ADHD or on the autism spectrum, and for employees with sensory sensitivities. Usually the changes are practical: how tasks are handed over, how meetings run, what the workspace sounds like, how the schedule is built.
Separately, I support the workplace integration of employees affected by PTSD or military trauma — again at the level of working conditions and communication.
The point is simple. Managers shouldn’t have to lose brilliant people who only needed different conditions.
What changes when the friction is resolved?
People stop defending territory and go back to building. Managers stop spending their week putting out fires. Systems get connected without delivery stopping on the way. And the company stops losing good people for reasons that could have been prevented.
Background
Almost 20 years in tech and 10 years in leadership. As Director of Architecture at Playtika, I was responsible for 200+ engineers across several sites. As VP R&D at FINCOM, I built the R&D organization from zero — team, architecture and delivery — supporting more than 30 U.S. banks in production.
How to start
I start by understanding where cooperation breaks down — and whether the problem sits with people, responsibilities, or the way the teams are expected to work together.
Send me a message describing the situation in a few sentences. You don’t need to know exactly what’s wrong. “Something is stuck between these people” is enough to start.
My work focuses on workplace conditions and working relationships; it is not therapy or clinical care.