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The principle of mentalmerger^®

It is now commonly recognized that it is not sufficient to handle mergers, co-operations and Joint Ventures by only treating the so-called "hard facts", i.e. legal aspects, organization, structure and financial elements. The "Non material reality" (soft facts) such as hopes, fears, states of mind, affinity between key players, management styles… are now unanimously considered as at least as important as the hard facts.

However, the standard way of treating the "non material reality" focus on optimizing mutual understanding and building of a common corporate culture by implementing methods having proven their efficiency, such as implementation of common procedures, joint action plans and shared commitments.

Such standard way of treating the "non material reality" is often not effective, especially on a long-term basis. The expected return on investment disappears because human being's emotions such as fears, uncertainty and distrust, characteristic in such situation, are not professionally treated, or even worse, are ignored. However, its are especially those "emotional virus" which prevent people from an open minded communication, i.e. from constructively discuss and elaborate common procedures, actions plans and commitments.

JPB's extensive experience and daily's observation over 20 years demonstrated that the most basic cause of failure of mergers, co-operations and Joint Ventures is ... mutual distrust.

This atmosphere of mutual distrust is even increased when carrying out a reorganization project affecting the current organization since generating a general feeling of sadness (loss of former identities) and, in addition to that, an overall uncertainty which will bringt people to focus on their own survival.

Therefore, there will be no merger in operations in general and no constructive involvement in a reorganization project in particular if people do not merge mentally. This is a fundamental condition sine qua non for successfully implementing a new organization, shared commitments, common procedures and joint action plans is to build up a basis of real confidence among involved key-players.

One of the key goals of each co-operation should therefore be to achieve the mentalmerger® as quick as possible, i.e. to durably implement:

• a basis of mutual confidence
• a positive co-operation spirit based on mutual respect and acceptance
• a professional way of managing inter-personal relations.