You are Marieke Vos, Director of the Integration Office at Lowlands Logistics Group, a company that came into existence this morning. Before the founding message falls due in two weeks, you must commit your office to one reading of where the merger's strain sits, because every first signal you send will follow from it.
The situation
On 1 April 2026 two Dutch logistics-technology firms became one group of €750 million and 3,000 people. Stadhaven, founded in Rotterdam in 1998, brings 1,800 staff and €410 million of revenue and calls itself engineering-led: "we never miss a shipment". Nimbus, founded in Amsterdam in 2016, brings 1,200 staff and €340 million and calls itself the cloud-native firm that bought a legacy player. Nimbus is the acquirer; headquarters stays in Rotterdam.
The deal's value sits in one place: the 1,150 engineers who must build a single freight platform out of two, carrying €22 million of synergies. People analytics has flagged about 250 of them as at elevated risk of leaving; losing the 50 most critical would slip the platform by six to nine months.
This morning's pulse survey: 34% describe themselves as Lowlands people, 81% still as Stadhaven or Nimbus people, and the merger's fairness scores 5.2 out of 10. The chief executive, Joost Rietveld, came from Nimbus; the chief operating officer, Hendrik Bloem, from Stadhaven. You have spent fifteen years at Stadhaven, and Nimbus managers have already noticed who runs the process that will decide whose practices survive.
Your office is divided on where the strain really sits, and the answer decides who your first visits, first words and first listening sessions are for.