A Compelling Strategy Does Not Automatically Create Support
One of the greatest misconceptions in M&A is believing that a compelling strategy automatically creates support. It does not.
A board member sees risk. An employee sees uncertainty. A regulator sees market concentration. A founder sees legacy. The same transaction means different things to different people. Great dealmakers understand this instinctively. They do not ask others to care simply because they care. They help each stakeholder understand why the outcome matters to them.
Alignment, not persuasion, is what moves deals forward.
Greene's thirteenth law says to appeal to people's self-interest rather than their mercy or gratitude. Read coldly, it sounds transactional. But strip away the cynicism and a core M&A truth remains. Every successful deal aligns incentives. This is not manipulation. It is stakeholder management, and it is most of what determines whether a transaction survives contact with the people it affects.
The mistake leaders make is assuming logic is universal. Employees ask what this means for them. Shareholders ask how it improves returns. Regulators ask how it protects competition. Customers ask whether they will get better service. Suppliers ask whether the relationship continues. People support transactions when they can see themselves in the future being proposed.
Seven Cases from the Deal Floor
These cases share one discipline. In each, support was built not with a single message, but by answering a different question for each audience.
Pfizer–Wyeth2009
Why should shareholders support a massive acquisition during a period of uncertainty?
In the middle of a turbulent market, Pfizer needed shareholders to back a large acquisition. Rather than simply assert that it was a good deal, it framed the transaction around what shareholders actually cared about.
It emphasised diversification, stronger pipelines, and reduced dependency on a few blockbuster drugs. Shareholders saw their own interests addressed, and support grew.
Support grows when stakeholders understand their gain.
Dell–EMC2016
Different stakeholders wanted different outcomes from one of the largest tech deals ever.
A transaction this size touched customers, employees, and investors who each measured success differently. A single message would have satisfied none of them.
So Dell told three stories at once: end-to-end solutions for customers, growth opportunities for employees, and long-term transformation for investors. One deal, deliberately, required multiple value narratives.
One deal often requires multiple value narratives.
Heinz–Kraft2015
Convincing shareholders to back the merger.
The investor audience had specific priorities, and the merger narrative was built to match them rather than to impress in the abstract.
It emphasised cost efficiencies, operational improvements, and increased scale, the exact levers that investor base valued. Messaging tailored to the audience created alignment.
Tailored messaging creates alignment.
T-Mobile–Sprint2020
Regulators were skeptical, consumers worried, and competitors opposed the deal.
A deal facing that much resistance could not be won with one argument. Each audience had a different objection, and each needed a different answer.
The companies reframed the combination around accelerating 5G deployment, competing more effectively, and expanding rural coverage. The same transaction was made to solve a different problem for each audience.
The same transaction must solve different problems for different audiences.
Takeda–Shire2019
Takeda shareholders feared the deal would load the company with excessive debt.
The fear was specific and legitimate, and ignoring it would not have made it go away. Leadership chose to address it directly and repeatedly.
It focused on global scale, pipeline strength, and future growth, while engaging the debt concern head-on rather than dismissing it. Addressing stakeholder fears directly can change them in a way that ignoring them never will.
Ignoring stakeholder fears rarely changes them. Addressing them directly can.
United Technologies–Raytheon2020
How do you unite two large organisations behind one combination?
Bringing two complex organisations together meant winning over several constituencies at once, none of which shared the same definition of a good outcome.
Leadership communicated specifically to each: more opportunities for employees, diversification for investors, innovation for customers, and stronger capabilities for governments. Alignment was built one stakeholder at a time.
Alignment happens stakeholder by stakeholder.
The Synergy Slide Nobody Believed
The final slide says, "This acquisition creates shareholder value." Nobody objects, and nobody is convinced.
The single message lands flat because it is nobody’s message in particular. So the real questions surface anyway. The CHRO asks what happens to our people. Operations asks who owns day-one decisions. Sales asks what happens to key accounts. The board asks what if the synergies do not materialise.
The revised presentation answers each one directly: how careers evolve for employees, what improves for customers, the return profile for investors, and how execution will actually work for leaders. Resistance declines, not because the strategy changed, but because each stakeholder could finally see themselves in it.
People rarely oppose deals because they dislike the strategy. They oppose deals because they cannot locate their interests within it.
The Four Questions Every Stakeholder Asks
Behind every stakeholder reaction sit the same four questions. Great dealmakers answer all four, for each audience, before they ask for support.
- 1What is in it for me?
The obvious one, and the only one most communications bother to answer.
- 2What might I lose?
Fear of loss usually outweighs the promise of gain. Address it explicitly or it will fill the silence.
- 3Can I trust you?
Credibility determines whether your answers to the first two questions are even believed.
- 4What happens next?
People fear ambiguity more than change. A clear picture of the path reduces resistance on its own.
How to Apply This at Your Level
Do not assume strategic clarity creates alignment. Translate the vision into concrete outcomes for each stakeholder group. Your job is not to explain why the deal is good for the company. It is to show each constituency why it is good for them.
The Paradox at the End of Law 13
The leaders who focus exclusively on their own objectives often struggle to gain support. The leaders who deeply understand other people’s interests often achieve their own objectives more effectively. Alignment is not compromise. It is intelligent design.
Every transaction asks people to move toward an uncertain future. Yet people do not move because a strategy is elegant or because a leader is convinced. They move when they can locate themselves in what is being proposed, when the future on offer has a place in it that is recognisably theirs. The work of alignment is simply the work of helping each person find that place, honestly, before you ask them to walk toward it.
People rarely oppose the strategy. They oppose a future they cannot find themselves in.
Show Each Stakeholder Their Stake
In M&A, sustainable agreements emerge when every party can see what they stand to gain. Stop asking people to support your deal. Show them why supporting it serves their interests.
Because people do not move toward a future they cannot find themselves in. Show them their place in it, and they will help you build it.
Before your next meeting on a live deal, ask yourself:
- 1.For each stakeholder in this deal, have I answered what is in it for them, in their language and not mine?
- 2.Whose fear of loss am I underweighting because the upside seems obvious to me?
- 3.Have I given people a clear picture of what happens next, or left them in ambiguity?
- 4.Am I asking people to support my deal, or showing them why it serves theirs?