The Most Dangerous Deals Become Performances
Some deals fail quietly. Others fail publicly. But the most dangerous transactions are the ones that become performances.
The press conferences grow larger. The promises become grander. The executives become celebrities. Eventually attention shifts from creating value to maintaining excitement. In M&A, visibility is unavoidable. The only real question is whether you are managing attention, or being consumed by it.
The market rewards the stories it notices, not necessarily the deals with the best spreadsheets.
Robert Greene's sixth law says to court attention at all costs, to stand out because obscurity is dangerous. Read literally into M&A, that is a trap. The professional version is narrower and harder. Seek the right attention, and avoid becoming the spectacle.
Deals do not only compete for capital. They compete for belief. Too little attention and employees disengage, investors misunderstand, and regulators grow suspicious. Too much and egos inflate, expectations explode, and execution suffers. The whole skill is calibration. Law 5 was about the trust attached to your name. Law 6 is about the visibility attached to your deal.
Seven Cases from the Deal Floor
These cases sit on a spectrum, from deals consumed by their own spectacle to deals where attention was used deliberately and then handed back to the work.
AOL–Time Warner2000
The deal that would define the future of media.
It was the largest merger in history, and it was covered like a coronation. The executives were celebrated as visionaries and the coverage never stopped. The trouble is that attention sets expectations, and these expectations became impossible.
Once the headline was the point, execution became secondary. The integration that actually needed the energy was competing with the performance for it, and the performance won until reality finally arrived.
When headlines become the objective, integration becomes an afterthought.
Musk–Twitter2022
A negotiation conducted in public, tweet by tweet, with the media following every move.
The deal became entertainment. The narrative shifted daily, driven by posts rather than process, and billions of people watched each turn. Visibility was total and discipline was absent.
Legal complications followed the spectacle, because everything said in public became material. Attention without discipline does not create leverage. It creates chaos.
Visibility without discipline creates chaos.
Disney–Pixar2006
Remarkably restrained attention, pointed at the asset rather than the acquirer.
Bob Iger did not cast himself as the hero of the acquisition. He kept the focus on the creative future of Pixar and on what the combination would protect, not on his own role in engineering it.
The attention supported the asset rather than the acquirer. That is the difference between a leader using visibility as a tool and a leader using a deal as a stage.
The best leaders direct attention toward the mission, not themselves.
Microsoft–LinkedIn2016
Clear but controlled attention.
Microsoft communicated the strategic rationale, the future vision, and concrete reassurance to employees, and it did all of that without excessive hype. The message was confident and specific rather than grand.
Stakeholders got what they actually needed, which was confidence, not spectacle. The visibility served the integration instead of competing with it.
Stakeholders need confidence, not spectacle.
WeWork–SoftBank
Founder mythology, media fascination, and a cult of personality.
The attention around WeWork was built on a charismatic founder narrative, and for a while the narrative outran the numbers. The visibility was intoxicating, and it masked governance weaknesses that should have been obvious to anyone looking past the story.
When reality finally surfaced ahead of the IPO, the story collapsed and the value went with it. The valuation fell from roughly $47 billion to a fraction of that, and the offering was pulled.
Excessive visibility can conceal fragile fundamentals, until it cannot.
Kraft Heinz–Unilever2017
Public resistance that turned a transaction into a national debate.
Once the approach was public, it stopped being a financial question and became a political one. National-interest concerns surfaced, Unilever mobilised support, and the attention intensified by the day.
With the narrative out of its control, the bid collapsed. Once a public narrative forms around a deal, the deal rarely stays purely financial again.
Once public narratives form, deals rarely remain purely financial.
The Analyst Nobody Notices
Every team has two people. One performs visibility. The other earns it.
One person speaks constantly, wants to be in every meeting, and makes sure everyone notices the work. The other delivers consistently, solves problems quietly, and makes the people around them more successful.
At first the visible person collects the recognition. Over time, the trusted operator becomes the one senior leaders request by name and clients rely on. Their reputation spreads without self-promotion, because contribution travels further than performance.
Sustainable visibility is earned through contribution, not performance.
The Four Levels of Attention
Attention in a deal sits at one of four levels. The first two build belief. The last two quietly dismantle it. The goal is to operate at Levels 1 and 2, and to notice the moment you are sliding into 3 or 4.
- 1Necessary visibility
People understand why the deal exists and what happens next. This is the minimum, and it is healthy.
- 2Strategic narrative
Stakeholders believe the transaction creates value. Attention is doing useful work, building the belief the deal needs.
- 3Spectacle risk
Attention shifts toward personalities and theatre. Execution starts to weaken, because the show is now competing with the work.
- 4Attention addiction
Visibility itself becomes the objective. The deal loses discipline, and decisions are made to feed the narrative rather than the outcome.
Operate consistently at Levels 1 and 2. Treat any drift into Levels 3 and 4 as a warning that the performance has started to replace the work.
How to Apply This at Your Level
Own the narrative, but avoid becoming its protagonist. Before any communication, ask one question. Are we doing this to inform, or to impress? The first builds belief in the deal. The second builds a story about you, and that story will eventually compete with the execution.
The Paradox at the End of Law 6
Obscurity limits opportunity. Spectacle destroys credibility. Neither extreme is safe, and the professionals who thrive in M&A understand both ends at once.
They make sure their work is visible enough to build belief. But they never allow themselves to become bigger than the transaction itself. Every deal tells a story that investors hear, employees repeat, customers respond to, and regulators interpret. The question is never whether attention exists. It always does. The question is whether that attention strengthens execution or distracts from it.
In M&A, the deals remembered most fondly are rarely the loudest. They are the ones that quietly delivered what everyone else only promised.
Control the Narrative, Not the Spotlight
In M&A, visibility shapes outcomes. Attract enough attention to build belief, but never let the deal become a spectacle.
Attract enough attention to build belief. Then return the spotlight to the work.
Before your next meeting on a live deal, ask yourself:
- 1.Am I communicating to inform, or to impress?
- 2.Is the attention on this deal strengthening execution, or distracting from it?
- 3.Have I let myself become bigger than the transaction?
- 4.If the spotlight disappeared tomorrow, would this deal still stand on its fundamentals?