Don’t miss your Bernie moment 

Helping your organization move on

Bernie_Sanders_DNC_July_2016Let me start out this post by saying it’s NOT about politics. In fact, let me repeat that one more time right up top: it’s not about politics. It’s about how a figure in the 2016 political landscape — nope, not Trump — can teach you something about business and culture within organizations.

I was watching a few nights of the Democratic National Convention last week and when I saw Bernie Sanders speaking to the crowd, I sent a one-word text to a good friend of mine: Brilliant.

Why did I think it was brilliant?

Bernie Sanders took his followers through three major stages of any process:

  • Celebration
  • Application
  • Dedication

This is insanely hard to do. In fact, just the other week — after seeing Bernie at the convention — I was having lunch with a colleague and we were talking about merger integration.  As I think most people know or realize, most mergers fail. (83% is a conventional number thrown around.) And yet, we see them every week — in this summer alone, we’ve seen Microsoft grab LinkedIn (for a lot) and Verizon grab Yahoo (for not nearly as much). That part makes sense: mergers are one of the fastest paths to growth.

Here’s what is harder: in every merger or acquisition, there’s a company and set of leaders who “won” or will “win” in terms of their ideas, processes, and culture coming through stronger. This happens in politics, obviously: Clinton beat Sanders, and Trump beat Cruz and Rubio and others. It’s the nature of competition that certain people, and ideas, win out over others.

Every company and leader that gets into these positions, though, has a Bernie Moment. It’s where you can choose to move from application to dedication on behalf of another set of leaders, or another company.

You can’t miss the Bernie Moment. When you miss it, your merger/acquisition is headed for that 83% failure rate stat above.

So what’s the method for arriving at the Bernie Moment? I’d say it breaks down into five parts:

Celebrate the previous victories

If you watched Bernie’s speech at the DNC, he spent the first couple of minutes on himself. He talked about all the votes he received. He mentioned that donations averaged $27 (the crowd loved that part). He mentioned all the voters who had never participated before. He defined it as a movement, essentially.

This was a crucial step because you had 5-10 minutes of yelling and hollering in a happy way. The crowd was chanting “Bernie!” almost the entire time. This needed to happen first, because if he had gone right into supporting Hillary, his supporters would have booed the hell out of that. A TV moment like that isn’t good for Hillary, and it isn’t good for what Bernie accomplished in this campaign cycle.

For a leader, then, it needs to begin with celebrating the wins that came before. That gets everyone aligned around the greatness of the cause and the work.

Be honest about change

After the crowd was fired up, Bernie admitted defeat. He lost. It wasn’t useful to sugarcoat it. He came right out and said it:

I understand that many people here in this convention hall and around the country are disappointed about the final results of the nominating process. I think it’s fair to say that no one is more disappointed than I am.

If you’re familiar with the standard stages of grief, it looks something like this:

As a leader or when building out a culture/movement, though, it doesn’t move in this exact way. Bernie almost began on the far right side — affirmation, hope — then moved down to depression. It’s almost the reverse of the standard grief curve, which usually happens when a loved one dies or something else terrible happens.

By now, though, Bernie had fired up the crowd then reset them in reality. Now it was time for the transition point.

Transition

Here’s what he did here:

Let me be as clear as I can be. This election is not about and has never been about Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders or any of the other candidates who sought the presidency. This election is not about political gossip, it’s not about polls, it’s not about campaign strategy, it is not about all the things that the media spends so much time discussing.

This election is about and must be about the needs of the American people and the kind of future we create for our children and our grandchildren.

In short, this is what he was saying: the mission is the mission, and the mission is important. It’s not about the people. It’s about the purpose.

This has TONS of implications in mergers/acquisitions, because usually what happens in those contexts is that one culture is totally absorbed by the other — so the “losing” culture is chucked out the window, essentially. If you have one culture based on financial metrics only and one culture based on collaboration/sharing, and the latter culture loses, well, those people who liked collaboration feel they now have to adapt or get a new job ASAP.

Leaders often try to skirt this issue by appealing to mission, purpose, and core values. That’s the “transition” moment in mergers. That’s when you move from “We were two companies” to “Now we’re one company, and let’s be honest, stuff will be different around here.” But you can make people focus less on what’s going to be different by appealing to a purpose. That’s what Bernie did and what a good leader can do.

change

Moving On

In standard grief cycles, this is “acceptance.” Bernie transitioned to supporting Clinton and encouraging others to support her as well. Days earlier, when he even remotely suggested this, he was booed. But here, he had to move on. Now, it’s easier to move on when you can …

Find a common enemy

In an article from The New Yorker about how the gun industry markets itself (and please remember, again, that this post is not meant to be political), there was a reference to the acknowledged technique of generating revenue by emphasizing the boundaries of a community. “We all have the need to belong,” he wrote in a presentation entitled “How to Turn One of Mankind’s Deepest Needs Into Cold, Hard Cash.” In a section called “How Do You Create Belief & Belonging?” he explained, “You can’t have a yin without a yang. Must have an enemy.”

Must have an enemy. It’s very powerful. You can argue Trump does this too, re: Clinton (“Crooked Hillary”) and immigrants.

Bernie made Trump, and his implied lack of focus on mission/purpose, the common enemy. In this way, he wasn’t necessarily “siding” with Hillary so much as he was working alongside her against a common foe.

This is really important in business. You wouldn’t do the merger or acquisition unless there was some value-add on both sides, right? So the value-add was there, the financials and legal repercussions were vetted, and it proceeded. Now you’re together. It’s going to be hard but you’re together against a common enemy — your competition, or the idea you’re trying to take down. When Google buys a company, for example, hopefully it’s fitting into the matrix of “organizing the world’s information.” The acquired company has common enemies with Google now — other tech rivals, but also processes that are making it hard for people to acquire and organize information.

You need to appeal to the common enemy. Almost all of our brains are wired to think in terms of “ingroup” vs. “out-group.” Business has been organized in those terms and constructs for generations.

The Recap

That’s the five-step path to your Bernie Moment, then:

  • Celebrate
  • Accept fate and be honest
  • Transition
  • Move on
  • Find a common enemy

It worked for Bernie — he’s continuing his movement — and it can work for your business, whether you’re Satya Nadella and Jeff Weiner or two guys merging local ice cream stores. Just think about the process and try not to miss your Bernie moment!

Be well. Lead On.
Adam

Related Posts:

The Power of Authenticity

Investing in talent for the long-term

Peer accountability is critical to success in teams

Adam L Stanley

Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog

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