Have you ever worked for a company that was getting acquired? Here is an interesting S2UI scenario to consider that revolves around managing fear, empathizing with team members and controlling your flow.
You have worked your butt off for the last few years to build up your company. You are in a legacy business category (i.e. you are not creating the next big thing, you are instead in a mature industry with continuous evolution and micro innovation). Your company has been owned by a private equity firm, and they seem OK when they are in the office for board meetings, but you really have not had much exposure to them because you are never in that room.
Anyhow, you get the news on a Tuesday night as your CEO sends an email letting everyone know you have just been acquired. The board and PE firm have approved the sale, and now it is going through regulatory processes.
“Oh no,” you think, as you get a rush of emotions. But they all boil down to one big question: “Will I get fired?”
You think to yourself, “OK, calm down. What did they say the name of the company was that is acquiring us? Let me poke around on the web and see what they are all about.” You do that, like immediately, and you grab a glass of wine to help soothe your nerves. “That tastes good,” you think to yourself as you wonder if this is what people meant when they said, “It takes the edge off.” Anyhow, back to the search, what does the news say, what about Glassdoor, do their people think they suck? “Wow,” you think to yourself as you notice a ton of people
You go to bed moderately buzzed, but with a ton of thoughts swimming in your mind. You nod off into unconsciousness with your head pounding and a sense of losing control of your future.
The next morning you are a little more focused on getting to the office on time. Not to be a kiss ass, but because your nerves are definitely on edge. You show up, and Stephen, your CEO, has a company “town hall” meeting to discuss the news with all departments. He seems pretty excited about the news and starts to thank everyone for all of their hard work to get us here.
You start looking around the room, and you see all these people that have worked their tails off right alongside you. You start to fade out Stephen’s speech, as you consider your colleagues. You don’t mean to, but you involuntarily start picking off everyone who is replaceable. Before you know it, everyone has been fired in your mind with the exception of about seven7 people. “But we have 150 people, and now only seven of them matter,” you think to yourself, “can this be true?”
So, what do those seven people bring to the company that the other 143 (including yourself) don’t? Experience? Intelligence? Unique skills? All that?
“Maybe,” you think to yourself as Stephen’s speech winds down, “it is not that bad. He sounds happy about it.” He is using words like “scale” and “synergies” and “expansion” to describe why this is happening. “Maybe we are going to get bigger budgets to hire more resources, to really take advantage of the great work we have done,” you consider to yourself. And then your skeptical side comes back, “Or maybe that is all corporate BS.”
“OK,” Stephen says, “It is business as usual for all of us as we try to reach our quarterly numbers. Let’s focus on what we can control and not lose sight of what has gotten us here; this team of ambitious and smart people who have created an awesome company.” “Well,” you think to yourself, “I can do that for sure.”
As you grab a sandwich and sit back down at your desk to work on market research around your product that coincides with new regulatory controls on internet privacy, you start to feel pretty good about things. You are sitting in a great spot to lead the new company in their understanding of why and how this product will have an impact on customers and for the business. But what about the other divisions of the company? What are they thinking?
Matt in finance, JoAnn in procurement, Sergio on the web team and others. They have to be pretty nervous about all of this.
Wait a minute, how big is the marketing team at X company? “Crap,” you think, “I can’t believe I have not looked at that yet.” You learn they have 12 market research people aligned with the marketing group. “Are you kidding me, I do that work for our whole company! “
What was that word you heard on NPR the other day regarding mergers and acquisitions? Redundancies, they said “managing redundancies.” “Oh man, that is the math I was doing when I determined there were only seven people here that would for sure have their job—they are not the types that are redundant.” You tell yourself to calm down again, and think, “I can’t be the only one analyzing it this way.”
You go into your boss’ office and she looks a little freaked out. VP of Marketing who was gunning for the CMO job and equity in the company. She is wicked smart, and one of the “7” seven you had on your list to make it. Wait, she really does look nervous -— “Whoaa,” you think, “does she think she is a redundancy that is going to be managed out of the way once this goes through? “
Your mind is blown for a minute, but you keep your cool. “Ahh, hey, Peggy, you got a minute?” She looks up, composes herself in typical Peggy fashion, and says, “What’s up?” “Yeah,” you say, “I am aligning the research I have been doing with a few
You take the opportunity to ask Peggy what she thinks. “Well, it has always been a possibility, I just did not think it would happen this fast.” You relax a bit, as she seems really sincere, and offer, “Well, the cool part is they seem like the right sort of company to buy us, and Stephen seems happy about it.” She agrees and goes on to say, “Right, exactly, and the best thing we can do is focus on what we can control, so let’s get a group together to go through the research and make sure the team understands the market opportunities to build our messaging around.” You comply, walk out of the room and schedule a short meeting for that afternoon.
As you gather about 5 colleagues for the afternoon meeting, everyone seems really distant. Peggy keeps the team focused, and outlines plans and steps. But hold up, Lisa throws out the elephant in the room “So does all this really matter, Peggy? I mean, we are getting acquired. Is it time for us to get our resumes ready?” Wow, you think, that was either brilliant or ridiculously stupid—either way, that was awesome.
All of a sudden, you get it. Lisa was thinking the same thing as you. And, most likely, so was everybody else in that room. All 150 people in the company.
Are all of us redundancies?
Till next time,
@realS2UI
