Merger She Wrote

The Scene: A Paris café in late November 1998.

Dramatis Personae: Daniele Bovio, 41, manager of America Online's operations in France, and Mary Foley, a 10-year veteran of AOL and head of corporate training. Foley, 34, who's been vacationing in Europe and hasn't read a newspaper in days, expects to enjoy a leisurely lunch while getting tourist tips from her colleague. But that is not to be the case.

Bovio: Have you heard the news?

Foley: What's up?

Bovio: We acquired Netscape yesterday.

Foley: Wow, what a great move. I remember when we were dogging it out in the marketplace. Now it's like we're taking over the world.

Bovio: True, but we've got a rough road ahead of us.

(Foley's excitement fizzles. She endured AOL's acquisition of Compuserve, and she knows the drill: She'll be pulled into HR meetings to discuss downsizing in other departments. Some longtime friends will get pink slips. She might even get one herself.)

Foley: You know, you're right. I'm not at all looking forward to dealing with the weeks of anxiety, waiting for both good news and bad.

This scene is not only real, but it's also being played out repeatedly across the globe as a result of such megamergers as Ford and Volvo, Chrysler and Daimler-Benz, Bell Atlantic and GTE, Fleet National Bank and BankBoston. Many of these merger-induced dramas end badly, however: According to Mitchell Marks, 43, a San Francisco - based organizational psychologist and merger expert, about three-quarters of mergers and acquisitions fail to produce their intended result.

For people like Foley, a merger or acquisition is a nerve-racking plotline that can leave careers and self-confidence in shambles. Does it have to be this way? Can any of us survive a merger without enduring an emotional melodrama? Marks thinks we can.

For 15 years, Marks has consulted in more than 60 mergers involving high-tech organizations, health-care corporations, banks, and consumer-products companies. Based on those experiences, he has written two books: From Turmoil to Triumph: New Life After Mergers, Acquisitions, and Downsizing (Lexington Books, 1994) and, with co-author Philip H. Mirvis, "Joining Forces: Making One Plus One Equal Three in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Alliances" (Jossey-Bass, 1998). The only thing that surprises Marks about the world of M&As is that people are still surprised at how hard mergers are on people.

"People get stressed about losing control," says Marks. "If you leave your company to pursue another opportunity, you pull the trigger; it's your choice to make the jump. But if some large enterprise buys you, you lose that control -- or at least that's the assumption."

The trick, Marks says, is to look past that assumption and understand which parts -- both onstage and off -- you can direct. In an interview with Fast Company, Marks shared his insights into how to play your part in a mandatory casting call for merged employees. Consider him the playwright who's trying to rewrite a better ending for the drama, The Merger.

ACT I : Pre-Merger Jitters

Scene One: Where smart players discover that their work life may not be in jeopardy.

Most people overreact when they hear that their company is tying the corporate knot with a longtime suitor. "I once worked with a blue-chip manufacturer that got acquired," Marks recalls. "The first rumor hit within a day: Three-thousand people were going to be laid off at headquarters -- which was pretty strange, since only 1,000 people worked at headquarters. People just assume the worst."

Take control by reframing the situation, advises Marks. Just as your company is going through a big-time change, a merger is a natural time for you to consider a radical change of your own. Ignore for the moment that your company is merging. Ask yourself, "If I were to make any change in my career, what would it be?" Marks says that many people respond by saying, "I would leave my current job."

Mary Foley did just that. She'd been struggling to get her master's degree in organization development from Pepperdine University while working part-time at AOL. When the Netscape deal was announced, she decided that the timing was right for her to leave AOL and commit herself fully to graduate school.

"I was already having trouble maintaining the intensity I wanted to at work," Foley says. "I wanted to give more, but I couldn't. And that wasn't very satisfying. And I knew that going through a major acquisition would be a huge emotional investment. I kept wondering whether I had the energy to do that again." In the end, Foley decided that she didn't. "I made a gut decision -- and I haven't regretted it. I had to accept that I couldn't work full-time and go to graduate school."