No Cultural Merger At Sprint Nextel

Nextel employees typically proposed acting quickly and recall becoming frustrated when their ideas were shot down by their Sprint counterparts. It wasn't that they didn't like the ideas, Sprint people said at the time. They just needed to consult their superiors before agreeing on a plan.

Many such meetings ended with Nextel employees storming out, leaving the Sprint side baffled. Sprint people thought Nextel made reckless decisions and spent money impulsively. Nextel people felt stifled by Sprint's process-oriented pace.

Personnel changes also brewed bitterness, said a Sprint executive who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. To be as fair as possible when deciding which employees would stay in duplicated jobs after the merger, Nextel and Sprint workers competed for the positions, a process that dragged on for months and created animosity.

"It would be hard to think of a problem that was given more attention" than the cultural issues, the Sprint executive said. "We leaned over backwards to understand the two cultures -- so much so that it basically made both parties compete. . . . No one could have predicted how difficult the true integration would be."

The decision to maintain dual headquarters, in Reston and Overland Park, Kan., only intensified the cultural divide. To avoid uprooting families and forcing employees to relocate, the board of directors voted to keep the company's operational nerve center in Kansas, Sprint's longtime home. Several top executives, however, would work from Nextel's stamping grounds in Reston.

"In the spirit of a merger, that was a big mistake," said Richard Dineen, an analyst with HSBC Securities. "Having your management and operations half a country apart doesn't foster a spirit of camaraderie."

At one point, the corporate jet shuttled between the two headquarters at least once a day. Sprint had recently built a sprawling, manicured campus in Overland Park, with such a large landscaping budget that Nextel folks referred to it as "Overhead Park."

For now, the company appears to be sticking with a two headquarters strategy. But Saleh has taken some steps to bridge the gap, holding a companywide webcast, for instance, to boost spirits after Forsee's departure.

But it may be a slow process. One recent Tuesday, a few Nextel veterans who had started at the company when it was young converged at the American Tap Room in Reston Town Center. Meanwhile, their co-workers from Sprint side hung out around the corner at Clyde's, another happy-hour watering hole.

While the split wasn't intentional, one employee one said, "it's just that, well, I think we all have a tendency to stick to our own kind."

Staff writer Kendra Marr contributed to this report.