Every CEO and board member I work with has the same vision before and after a merger or acquisition (M&A): legendary wins, market dominance, and financial models that sing. And on paper, the spreadsheets always look perfect. But here is the hard truth that nearly every business leader must confront: 70% to 80% of all mergers fail to hit their financial outcomes.
The Spreadsheet Lie
Why do these deals, which are meticulously planned and backed by billions in capital, fall apart? It’s not a capital problem; it’s a people problem.
The ink is barely dry on the paperwork when the human energy goes completely sideways. Suddenly, a company of high performers is wrestling with apprehension and fear. This creates a fog of confusion, friction, and a silent, toxic “us versus them” dynamic that scrambles team efficiency and crushes the bottom line.
You can’t achieve legendary wins if your newly formed team is stuck in neutral, wasting energy and second-guessing every move. You need to raise the Speed of Cooperation—and that’s exactly why I developed Fusion Alignment 90™.
Fusion Alignment 90™ is not a quick-fix Band-Aid; it is an intensive, 90-day framework designed to cut through that noise and confusion. My job is to level the playing field, bring clarity to roles, and get two groups of people to stop fighting and start pulling off the legendary wins the board was dreaming of.
Today, I’m going to pull back the curtain on the three essential components of the Fusion Alignment 90™ framework that you need to stop your merger from failing and help make sure your company not only survives the transition but thrives.
Fusion—The Problem of Human Energy
When we talk about M&A, the first term we need to address is Fusion. Fusion is about the human energy released the moment the deal closes, and it is usually toxic.
When a merger or acquisition is announced, it hits your employees like a shockwave. They likely weren’t aware of the negotiations, and suddenly they get a notice: “We have been bought out” or “We are now a part of XYZ.” Instead of excitement about new opportunities, the first emotion is apprehension. This change is unsettling, and it immediately breeds more questions than answers: What is my role now? What is the culture here? What about my income or my 401k?
The leadership team may be thinking, “These people are going to be so excited to join us,” but for the employee, it feels like the best of times and the worst of times.
Early Warning Sign #1: Key Leaders Head for “Greener Fields”
The greatest risk is losing the talent you acquired. Mergers often happen specifically to acquire key leaders and employees with great talent. If those people are not pulled into alignment, and if they do not feel communicated to, they gain control of the change by leaving for “greener fields.”
Another immediate sign of trouble is lack of cooperation. People will sit on their hands, not because they are rebellious, but because they simply don’t know the new lay of the land. They knew what they did on Mondays at their old company, but now they don’t know the new protocol.
The “Us vs. Them” Dynamic and the Turf War for “Secret Sauce”
The “us vs. them” dynamic is a natural but toxic phenomenon that happens in nearly every merger. If you try to direct people to adopt the new culture, you will face resistance. The process goes a lot easier if you ask them to join, ask them to help, and ask them to be part of the move forward.
This friction is intensified by the “turf war” over proprietary processes. If a manager asks an employee to share their methods with the new people, the employee’s inner voice screams: “I’m not sharing my secret sauce! If I give away my secret sauce, you may decide I’m not needed.” People fear that if they share tribal information, they lose their edge. This tension and friction must be eased quickly.
Bringing Two Divided Groups into Harmony
My job is to level the playing field and get everyone onto a new field. We successfully managed this kind of friction when I was part of the National Speakers Association (NSA) Chapter Leadership Institute. At the time, there was a real division between the national board and the local chapters. The chapters were getting momentum, but there was deep tension.
We had to facilitate a “remarriage” of these two divided groups. It took two years of working through it, but it required intense clarification and helping both sides understand the other’s intentions. We had to fix policies that sounded crazy to one group or the other. We worked until real authenticity and change began to happen in both groups.
It’s a process that requires lots of communication. It is not a quick fix, but it is possible to take two disparate groups and move them into a place of harmony. That’s what Fusion Alignment 90™ is designed to do.
Alignment—Casting a Vision Worth Sacrificing For
If Fusion is about dealing with the volatile human energy released after a merger, Alignment is the process of channeling that energy toward one goal. Alignment is, simply put, clarifying roles and getting all misaligned people moving in the same direction. The minute people stop sitting on their hands—waiting, wondering, and fearing the change—and start moving with purpose, your efficiency climbs. But this all begins at the top.
The Visionary CEO
The most crucial step in any alignment effort is the leader’s willingness to cast a clear vision. They must be transparent about their hopes and expectations, even if they can’t share every detail of the coming months. When the leader casts a vision for market dominance or achieving X, Y, and Z, they immediately elevate the conversation beyond a simple transaction. I always tell leaders this: People will follow a leader, but they will sacrifice for a visionary.
Think of it like Tom Brady. When he went to the Buccaneers, he didn’t just join a team; he pulled the team into his vision of winning a Super Bowl—and he did it in a single year. That’s the power of a visionary who knows where they are headed and can articulate it in a way that inspires others to sacrifice their time, ego, and effort for a collective legendary win.
To get people aligned, we must address two critical things: their individual clarity and the team’s capacity to communicate.
Priority Management
Chaos in a company often stems from chaos in individual roles. Many people were hired to do one thing, and a few years later, they’re doing a small part of their original job and a bunch of other things that aren’t on any job description. I can’t stress this enough: We have to address the chaos of misaligned jobs with Priority Management. When you are crystal clear about your key roles—what you are supposed to be doing—it becomes incredibly easy to say no to everything else. Fusion Alignment 90™ recalibrates those roles quickly, giving people the clarity to be more efficient.
Creating a Safe Space for Issues (The EOS Model)
Alignment is impossible if the leadership lacks the capacity to listen. The team needs a dedicated, safe place to raise concerns. I am a big fan of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) model, which incorporates a time for Issues in their regular meetings. By explicitly asking, “What are your top two issues with this project, this week, or with people?” the leadership is sending a powerful two-part message:
- We know there are issues. We are acknowledging the reality of friction.
- We want to hear what your issues are. We are listening.
This is not a city council meeting where people complain and nobody listens. This must be a place of curiosity and intention. You can’t iron out any wrinkles you’re not willing to put on the table, and it is the leader’s job to create a place for that. Once people feel heard, those issues can be ironed out, and the team can move forward together.
The Tools of Trust and Cooperation
If you’ve channeled the energy (Fusion) and focused the vision (Alignment), your team is finally ready to move. But to turn that motion into profit, you need practical tools that accelerate trust and cooperation, especially when two cultures are colliding. This final section of the Fusion Alignment 90™ framework introduces three of the most powerful tools we deploy.
1. Courageous Conversations: The “Out of Character” Approach
How do you handle difficult, high-stakes conversations—like missed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or cultural missteps—without creating drama or attacking a person’s identity? You adopt the model of Casting Calls, just like Disney does.
Disney doesn’t hire employees; they cast people for a role that comes with a specific character. This character—whether it’s an engineer, a salesperson, or an office manager—has defined responsibilities and expected behaviors.
When someone on the team is struggling or missing a deadline, the conversation is framed not as a personal attack, but as an issue with the role: “Based on what I’m seeing, it looks like the character you’re portraying is currently ‘out of character’ for this role. What can we do to get you back into the character we need you to be to hit X, Y, and Z?”
This shared language creates a level of accountability without the drama. It allows leaders to focus on the behavior, the missing KPIs, and the responsibility, not the person.
2. The Trust Credit Score (TCS): Measuring the Invisible Currency
Everyone talks about trust, but very few people know how to measure it, fix it, or grow it. It’s often dismissed as a “gut feeling” or a “vibe.” But if you want to achieve legendary wins, you need a quantifiable way to manage this most critical asset.
The Trust Credit Score system recalibrates where trust actually comes from and, just like a financial FICO score, makes it measurable. The TCS is built around five key areas—the accelerators that you can be intentional about improving:
- Vibe/Presence: Your body language, energy, and appearance (your “costume”).
- Motives/Intentions: Are your intentions straight up solid? People can sense “commission breath” instantly.
- Core Values/Integrity: Are you aligned with the culture and values of the company?
- Expertise/Skill Set: Are you built for this? What is your proven skill level?
- Track Record/Receipts: Your history of reliability and accomplishment.
Once team members understand that they control their Trust Credit Score to some degree, they are empowered to be intentional and proactive about raising it. That’s where Trust Accelerators come in—intentional behaviors designed to raise your score with your peers and leaders. This is a huge tool for a new manager joining an existing team after a merger, as it quickly gives them an objective diagnostic of the people on their new deck.
3. The Fascination Advantage: Unlocking the Mystique
In any newly merged team, you must ensure that every voice—especially the most critical voices—is heard. That’s why we use the Fascination Advantage Personality Profile to unlock critical feedback.
We often find people with the “Mystique” personality style: they are observing, paying attention, and don’t speak up much in meetings. They have critical insights, but they will rarely initiate a discussion.
If you fail to call on them, their valuable feedback goes right over everyone’s head. Fusion Alignment 90™ teaches leaders how to intentionally call on these “Mystique” individuals, often mid-meeting, and say, “Tell us what we’re missing,” to ensure that critical, otherwise-unheard feedback is brought to the table. This intentional act ensures you don’t lose key insights just because a personality type prefers to listen over lead.
With these tools, we drastically increase the Speed of Cooperation, which is the ultimate key to achieving the financial goals of your M&A.
- Courageous Conversations: How do you handle hard conversations without drama? You talk about the character in the role, not the person. If a person misses KPIs, they’ve gotten “out of character.” This creates a shared language for accountability.
- The Trust Credit Score (TCS): Trust is not a gut feeling; it can be measured and improved. The TCS recalibrates trust based on five areas, giving you language to identify where a person is struggling or succeeding:
- Vibe/Presence
- Motives/Intentions
- Core Values/Integrity
- Expertise/Skill Set
- Track Record/Receipts
- Trust Accelerators: We teach proactive, intentional ways for people to raise their score with their peers and leaders.
- Unlocking the Fascination Advantage: Use personality profiles to ensure every voice is heard. You must intentionally call on these people to get the critical feedback that might otherwise go right over everyone’s head.
The 90-Day Metric and The Cost of Drift
Why 90 days? When I talk about Fusion Alignment 90™, people sometimes think it’s a P90X-style workout regimen. And in a way, it is—an intensive, focused effort to prevent a major business breakdown. The “90” is not the timeline for a full fix; you can’t align a company of thousands in three months. Instead, the 90-day window is a critical Time Frame for Momentum. It’s enough time to create a shared vocabulary, language, and foundational tools that the company can use for the next six months to a year, allowing the team to take ownership and continue the alignment process. My real goal is to work myself out of a job.
The Business Cost of Misalignment
You know that feeling when your car alignment is off? You feel the pull, you hear the wear, and if you ignore it, it costs you money in new tires and repairs. In business, the cost of drift is exponentially higher. When you are out of alignment, you are wasting energy doing other things. Wasted energy is wasted time, and wasted time is wasted money. Let’s not forget the shocking statistic: 70% to 80% of mergers fail to hit their financial outcomes. Most of that failure is because leaders won’t address the culture issues and the misalignment of people in places.
The Payoff: Increased Speed of Cooperation
The true, measurable benefit of Fusion Alignment 90™ is the resulting Speed of Cooperation. When teams have high trust, because they understand where they fit in the game, the friction disappears. They stop sitting on their hands, second-guessing every move, or questioning why someone did something. Their cooperation speeds up, and that momentum is what truly affects the bottom line. We are talking about becoming more efficient and making more money with less effort.
Measuring Legendary Wins
We measure success in two clear ways. First, the hard numbers: the financial and production Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Did we hit the targets? Was the project ahead of schedule and under budget? Second, we measure the temperature of the people. We use the Trust Credit Score (TCS) to provide tangible data on how much confidence peers have in one another. When the team sees their TCS going up—because they’ve made intentional, proactive improvements in their Vibe, Motives, Expertise, and Track Record—you know the culture is healing and that the friction is gone. When people are having fun at work, they simply get more done.
My job is to help you get six months ahead of schedule on what your merger is going to do
Your Commencement
The ink on a merger agreement isn’t the finish line; it’s your commencement. This is the moment where the real work of human energy begins. Don’t let your newly formed team simply “figure it out.” That is not a strategy; that’s a recipe for drift and lost profit.
If you want to stop the friction and start pulling off legendary wins, you need to get six months ahead of schedule. Listen to the full episode of the Change Energizer Podcast to hear my full conversation with Joey McGirr about the Fusion Alignment 90™ framework. Don’t forget to like and subscribe so you never miss another episode of The Change Energizer Podcast.
You can watch the full episode right here:
Get in Touch: Ready to energize your team? Book a discovery call with me, Scott Carley, at calltheenergizer.com or explore the framework at fusionalignment90.com. Let’s get you aligned.
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