I apologize for the delay in writing—it has been busy for the past few weeks. Hopefully I will get back to a regular weekly article because I really enjoy writing these and some of the ensuing conversations that happen with readers afterwards.
If you work professionally long enough, you will eventually get involved in some kind of external merger and acquisition activity and/or internal divisional roll up. As companies grow and contract, the ebb and flow of business units will involve some kind of “realignment of resources”. This could be as a result of external market forces or internal company forces—sometimes it is both.
When combining two business units together, the more keen among you will note that there will be some duplication of roles between those two units. The unfortunate truth is that when these things happen, there will be some Highlander-esque “There can be only one” activity that ensues, especially as you go higher and higher in the org chart.
The real challenge is trying to figure out if you are part of the problem or part of the solution. So what are your options When Two Teams Collide?
Resignation Two Ways
The easiest thing to do here is to remove yourself from the situation, either slowly or quickly, in some manner. You might see a formal resignation or an extended leave of absence from some of the team higher ups.
A formal resignation is a very clear signal that you are moving on to new opportunities, but also suggests that there is not a lot of confidence in the incoming management to take on the business unit.
A leave of absence is a subtler way that includes giving new management some grace to absorb the team without additional anxiety, as well as giving yourself some space to be approached for consultation, or perhaps re-integration, in the case of something going terribly wrong.
Schrödinger’s Box
In addition to an explicit, well-communicated resignation or leave of absence, you can also just disappear. People wonder what happened to you and there is mutual agreement by all parties not to talk about this. I have seen this happen. Where did they go? Why did they leave? Will they come back? No one knows, or at least no one says. This also comes with a certain amount of organizational anxiety, and usually suggests some level of disagreement between the two team leadership structures on what is the best plan going forward. Years later you might find someone took some kind of package or just cut communications entirely for various other reasons.
Transitional Leadership
Once the top tier of thunderdome has been finalized, there is generally a tier of captains and lieutenants that are still hanging around. They might be peacefully accepting of new generals and admirals or waiting to get some kind of sign whether they are getting to retain their roles or transition their responsibilities to others. This is a pretty common occurrence. You generally don’t see this at the very top of an organization, but certainly in the middle. You can expect that a graceful transition takes about a year to enact while everyone gets to know each other and sorts out what they want to do.
Over the course of integration you will start to get clearer signals about what the expectations are by new leadership. Do they want to retain you, trade you off to another team, or remove you? Let’s look at these individually.
Retainable Rose
A Retainable Rose will be given opportunities to do interesting projects over the course of a year. They will be called upon by new leadership to handle problems, as well as given reasonably good rewards. One of the clearest signals of being a Retainable Rose will come at EOY, at compensation time. A Retainable Rose will be awarded stock and/or options because they are seen as a worthwhile investment for the organization.
Fungible Fran
Fungible Fran is a different matter. It is not really clear if they want you to stay or if they want you to go. This is one of the worst places to be because there are usually a multitude of Fungible Frans when teams get rolled up, and most of the incoming leadership is insufficiently enlightened or self-aware to handle this situation gracefully. Most of the time they inadvertently pit the Fungible Frans against each other trying to decide which one they want to emerge victorious from thunderdome. I have been put in the Fungible Fran position a few times in my career and have often tried to apply Prisoner Dilemma rules to cooperate with my peers for a best outcome. On more than one occasion this resulted in someone throwing me under the bus.
I will confess that one time I treated a team of direct reports as Fungible Frans and did not realize it. I am still regretful about that.
If you get to a compensation review during a merger and you are not getting some sort of retention bump, especially in the form of equity or shares, you should take this as a sign that you should consider exploring your BATNA.
You might have the good fortune here of getting a side-grade into a different team at the company. Your management should be supportive of this and take steps to make that easy for you. Be warned that your manager may subtly undermine your ability to do this, in which case you might be less a Fungible Fran and more of a Regrettable Ron. The end of year review is one of the weapons that they might use. If your organization relies on these to make staffing decisions, this could be the tipping point on the scale that sends you to greener pastures at a new opportunity. If your existing manager weaponizes your end of year review, it could come back to haunt you. Your new boss might be looking for excuses to funnel end of year review money into other people regardless of how good you do your job.
Regrettable Ron
Now we come to the last category. The Regrettable Ron. You might be lucky and have a mindful leader who will just give you a package and send you on your merry way. The odds are that you will be unlucky. I get disappointed when I see organizations try to gaslight unwanted employees out of the organization. It is very inexpensive to create a resignation, and it is easy to retcon the HR documentation to suggest that this was not a regrettable departure for the team. You will find this happens more often than not. A team gets absorbed into a new management structure, and some percentage of staff (usually managers) are redundant and undesirable. You probably know within a week of the new leadership arriving if you are observant and a Regrettable Ron. You even might not have done anything wrong to deserve it—just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
There are a few things you can do when you are a Regrettable Ron. The first is to just focus on your job and accept that you are on a shot clock. Be polite and graceful about it, especially if this happened outside of your control. You are probably going to be set up for failure and asked to do things that you do not agree with. You can always follow those instructions with grace and regret while you attempt to do your very best.
You can also jump ship to a new opportunity. This is a double edged sword. It has cut me a few times in the past. If you run away from an unexpected workplace situation people will raise eyebrows about it and you will be called to the carpet on the subject when trying to get a new job. Why yes, I am speaking from experience here.
You can also blow yourself up. You might do this by design or do it inadvertently. Please try to avoid doing this. If you are in a position of responsibility, you should do your best to give ample time to transition your responsibilities to other people. Two weeks of courtesy notice is nice to give when you are early in your career. I have found that a month or more starts to make sense the more responsibility you have earned. I heartily recommend asking your direct manager how much notice they would like to have. It generally nets out to a month from my most recent experience, and it gives you a chance to exit with grace.
Generally speaking, there is a substantive part of the organization that does not fall into these buckets. The general day-to-day workers often carry on with business as usual. Consider yourself fortunate if you are in this position now and understand that it will not always be true in your career.
Take this opportunity to understand what will happen when you are on two teams that are getting merged, because in the future you will be one side or the other of this transaction. If you are on the receiving end, you can use this parable to give you an understanding of where you sit with your new incoming leadership and figure out how it affects your career.
If you are on the delivering end, maybe you can read the anxiety and disappointment that people have experienced on the receiving end of this business transaction and figure out how to humanize it more effectively—assuming you care about that sort of thing.
Thank you for reading! I hope to see you next week, where I might experiment with Amazon Associate Referral codes again. Apparently I have not yet generated three referrals, and they will eventually deactivate my account because I am a poor marketing shill. I may give you a list of “Top Ten Business Books I Have Never Read” in a panicked attempt to retain my coveted Associate status. Okay fine, I do not covet it that much. I accept my marketing shortcomings.
