Leading for Organisational Change

Chapter 7Starting Out

Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

Thomas Edison

Getting to Yes

On a Friday morning in September, all three firms convened full partners' meetings to tell their partners about the proposed deal, share the Information Memorandum, and explain next steps. While the press coverage the day before had certainly taken any element of surprise out of the meetings, the atmosphere, in all three rooms, was nevertheless one of anticipation. The senior leadership of each firm presented the proposal to their own partners, in their own words, based on the vision and rationale as set out in the Information Memorandum. Partners were given all the documents and a schedule of many smaller sector, practice group and team meetings, and meetings with senior management which would take place over the coming weeks to allow for deeper analysis and discussion, after a weekend's reflection.

In order to ensure confidentiality, in the Information Memorandum and all the other deal documents, the parties were referred to by code names. Rather than decode the Information Memorandum for printing and circulation, the team had produced a covering letter with a secure peel-off squares, like your bank would use to send you your pin number. When partners left the meeting rooms after those first announcement meetings, the floors were littered with little squares of transparent paper, slightly static and dancing, like tickertape after a parade, or confetti after a ...