Every Deal Team Has Someone Everyone Calls First
Every deal team has someone everyone calls first. When negotiations stall. When an integration issue escalates. When the board needs clarity.
It is not always the most senior person, and not always the smartest person. It is the person others trust to make complexity manageable. In M&A, influence rarely comes from titles alone. It comes from becoming the person whose presence consistently improves outcomes.
People do not depend on the best professionals because they have to. They depend on them because they want to.
Greene's eleventh law says to keep people dependent on you, to make yourself always needed. Read literally, it is advice to hoard knowledge, protect territory, and become a bottleneck, and the professionals who follow it usually stall their own careers. The M&A reinterpretation inverts the method while keeping the goal. Become a force multiplier others cannot easily replace, by solving difficult problems, connecting people, transferring knowledge, and making others successful.
Seven Cases from the Deal Floor
These cases separate two kinds of indispensability: the durable kind built on value created, and the brittle kind built on lock-in and control.
JPMorgan–Bear Stearns2008
In the financial crisis, regulators depended heavily on JPMorgan.
When the system needed a buyer for Bear Stearns over a weekend, the call went to JPMorgan. Not by accident: the firm had the execution capability, the balance-sheet strength, and the credibility to act under extreme pressure.
That dependence was earned, not engineered. Institutions that consistently deliver become the first call in moments of uncertainty.
Institutions that consistently deliver become the first call during moments of uncertainty.
Google–Android2005
Google did not try to build everything internally.
Rather than construct a mobile future from scratch, Google acquired Android and empowered its leadership to run it. The bet was on enabling expertise, not absorbing it.
Android became central to the entire Google ecosystem. Strategic value, allowed to develop, creates a mutual dependence that benefits both sides.
Strategic value creates mutual dependence.
Salesforce–Slack2021
Salesforce recognised that modern work increasingly depends on collaboration platforms.
Slack was not merely another product in a portfolio. It had become the infrastructure through which organisations communicate, which made it difficult to remove once embedded.
That kind of dependence is healthy, because it is rooted in solving a problem people face every day. The strongest assets solve problems others repeatedly encounter.
The greatest assets solve problems others repeatedly face.
Oracle–PeopleSoft2005
Oracle pursued customer relationships and an installed base.
The hostile pursuit revealed a hard truth about dependence: switching costs create leverage, because organisations resist abandoning systems they rely on. That stickiness was a large part of the prize.
But there are two kinds of dependence. Value-based dependence earns loyalty. Lock-in earns resentment, and resentment eventually looks for an exit.
Dependency created through customer value is powerful. Dependency created through lock-in eventually breeds resentment.
Visa–Plaid2020
Plaid had become critical infrastructure connecting fintech ecosystems.
Plaid sat at the centre of how fintech apps connect to bank accounts, and that centrality is exactly what made it an acquisition target. Becoming essential is attractive.
But it also attracts scrutiny. Regulatory concern followed, and the deal was abandoned. Becoming essential draws opportunity and attention in equal measure.
Becoming essential attracts both opportunity and attention.
Intuit–Mailchimp2021
Mailchimp helped small businesses reach customers; Intuit helped them manage finances.
Each company already solved one problem its customers faced repeatedly. Together, they could solve two adjacent problems through one integrated relationship.
That is how durable dependence is built, by deepening the value across adjacent needs rather than by trapping anyone. The strongest ecosystems solve multiple adjacent problems at once.
The strongest ecosystems solve multiple adjacent problems.
The Associate Who Made Life Easier
Two associates with similar technical skills, and one quiet difference in how they work.
One says that is not my responsibility. The other says I will help connect the right people, let me simplify this, I will make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
Soon partners request the second associate, clients trust them, and new opportunities appear, not because they hoarded knowledge, but because they reduced friction for everyone around them.
The professionals who become indispensable are often the ones who make everyone else’s job easier.
The Four Sources of Indispensability
Real indispensability is built, not hoarded. It comes from four sources that together create a kind of professional gravity.
- 1Expertise
Can you solve difficult problems that others cannot, or cannot solve as well?
- 2Reliability
Do people trust you to deliver, consistently, without being chased?
- 3Connectivity
Can you bring the right people together at the right moment?
- 4Stewardship
Do others believe you act in the collective interest rather than your own?
How to Apply This at Your Level
Build an organisation that people choose to rely upon, and avoid creating single points of failure, including yourself. Develop successors. A leader who cannot be replaced has usually failed to build something that lasts beyond them.
The Paradox at the End of Law 11
The people who try hardest to make others dependent on them often become bottlenecks, because everything has to route through the knowledge they refuse to share. Meanwhile, the people who freely share knowledge, develop others, and enable success become the ones everyone wants involved. They create dependence not through scarcity, but through abundance.
Every transaction reveals who truly creates value. Not the person who guards information, and not the person who protects territory, but the person who makes uncertainty manageable, complexity understandable, and collaboration possible. Their phone rings first in a crisis. Their opinion carries weight in difficult decisions. Their absence is felt immediately.
The professionals who share knowledge most generously often become the hardest to replace. Not because people cannot function without them, but because everyone functions better when they are there.
Become Indispensable, Not a Bottleneck
In M&A, do not build dependence through control. Build it through irreplaceable contribution. People should rely on you because they want to, not because they have to.
Because influence in M&A is rarely built by making others weaker. It is built by making others stronger.
Before your next meeting on a live deal, ask yourself:
- 1.Am I indispensable because I add unique value, or because I have made myself a bottleneck?
- 2.Whose job did I make easier this week?
- 3.If I went on leave tomorrow, would the team function, or have I hoarded what only I know?
- 4.Am I developing a successor, or quietly protecting my own irreplaceability?