By Patrick McCreesh

There is a moment in every merger or acquisition that feels a bit like a scene from The Office when the character Michael Scott believes he is inspiring the whole room—and everyone else quietly panics. On paper, the deal makes sense. The strategy is sound. The synergies are modeled. The spreadsheets tell the story in numbers. And yet, somewhere between the Letter of Intent and Day 1, something far less rational begins to unfold.

People get involved.  And people get Stuck.

Not stuck because they don’t understand the strategy. Not stuck because they lack capability. They get stuck because, at its core, M&A is not just a strategic event, but an event that creates opportunity for some and a concentrated sense of loss for others. And it is that sense of loss that causes people to get stuck.

M&A: Change at Maximum Intensity

Most organizational changes happen in chapters. A new system here. A leadership shift there. Maybe a restructuring that unfolds over months. M&A is different. It can be the entire book, dropped on an employee’s desk all at once.

In a single moment, team members can face changes to leadership, culture, systems, roles, identity, and strategy. The familiar becomes unfamiliar overnight. We know that even small workplace changes can trigger a biological response tied to attachment—so what happens when everything changes at once? The answer is predictable: people feel loss.

They lose known processes. They lose trusted relationships. They lose the unwritten rules that helped them succeed. And in many cases, they lose the identity of “who we are” as an organization. This is what makes M&A uniquely challenging. It compresses multiple layers of change—and multiple layers of loss—into an extraordinarily short window.

If you listen closely during integration, you’ll hear echoes of loss in every deal.  You’ll hear the seasoned employee defending “the way we’ve always done things.” You’ll see teams clinging to legacy systems. You might even find a team member quietly fixated on a physical symbol of stability like a red Swingline stapler.

These are not signs of resistance for resistance’s sake. They are signals of attachment to the workplace and culture that you, as a buyer, find valuable – or that you as a seller sold to the buyer.  There are three common challenges where we tend to see that sense of loss most prominently:

The Leadership Challenge: Balancing Two Brains – M&A also demands something more from leaders. Leaders must operate with dual awareness: the analytical rigor required to execute the deal and the emotional intelligence required to lead people through it. Too often, leaders lean heavily into the former. They focus on timelines, deliverables, and financial outcomes, assuming that people will “get there” eventually. Most leaders selling a business fail to think about the integration aspects and the sense of loss that both they as leaders and their team will feel in the process. The best M&A leaders understand that integration is not just about combining systems—it’s about reconciling identities.

The “S” Word…Synergies – During the process of the acquisition, firms go through diligence where everyone is exploring why a deal will work or fail.  In diligence, synergy is a beautiful word.  It shows up in models, presentations, and boardroom discussions as a clean, quantifiable outcome. Cross-sell opportunities. Cost efficiencies. Expanded capabilities.  Before closing, synergies are a financial construct rather than a human one, but in integration real synergy requires behavior change. Many of the aspirational synergies never materialize because synergies require new relationships, new ways of working, and the relinquishing of old ways of doing business. That is not a spreadsheet exercise—it is a change management challenge rooted in attachment and loss.

The “Day 1” Myth – There is a common narrative in M&A that everything builds toward “Day 1.” The press release goes out. The leadership speaks. The integration begins. But for employees, Day 1 may not be a beginning, it might be an ending. It marks the moment when ambiguity becomes reality—when the theoretical loss becomes more tangible. This is why leading organizations invest heavily in Day 1 communication packages, leadership alignment, and stakeholder management. They recognize the need to provide clarity, support, and structure at the exact moment when uncertainty peaks. And yet, even the best Day 1 plan cannot eliminate the underlying experience of loss. It can only acknowledge it—and begin to guide people through it.

From Stuck to Momentum

To many of the employees in the company transitioning, M&A doesn’t just introduce a new future; it disrupts the past. And without acknowledging that disruption, even the best integration plans will stall.

So what separates successful M&A integrations from those that stall?

It is not just better strategy. It is better recognition of loss.

Organizations that succeed:

Acknowledge that this is not “business as usual”

Treat change management as a core capability, not a supporting function

Design integration efforts that build new attachments, not just new processes

Create space for employees to articulate what they are losing

Identify and label transitional objects that will support team members through the integration, such as:

“White glove” onboarding experiences that address individual concerns

Elements of legacy culture that will continue within the new organization

Shared integration rituals (town halls, onboarding cohorts, cross-team projects)

Clear points of contact for team members to lean on through the transition

These are not soft gestures. They are strategic mechanisms designed to help people re-anchor their attachments. In fact, when organizations embed structured change management into the M&A lifecycle—through stakeholder alignment, centralized communication, and continuous feedback—they not only accelerate deal timelines but also improve employee engagement.

In other words, they help people get unStuck.

Every M&A transaction has two deals. The first is the one negotiated in conference rooms—the financial, strategic, and legal agreement. The second is quieter, less visible, and far more complex. It is the deal each employee makes with the future: What am I losing? What am I gaining? And do I still belong here? Leaders who ignore that second deal risk watching their carefully constructed transaction unravel.