”Face your fears, ask the hard questions and have the heavy conversations, now.
Preparing for the potential of an amalgamation
Discussing your fears now can mitigate future risk
Bradley’s Top Tips for Regulators Facing the Potential for Amalgamation:
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- Bring your people together to build relationships
When boards and/or leaders are brought together, and relationships form, it creates a strong foundation for productive and honest discussions throughout the process. CEO to CEO, leader to leader, chair to chair, board to board – these relationships are critical. - Name, acknowledge and validate your fears
There are a lot of fears amongst the various players involved in an amalgamation. Some are valid and will be challenging, others just need a bit of probing and discussion to alleviate. - Define your non-negotiables
We all have them – these are the hills we are willing to die on. If these are clear, you can more easily compromise on other issues and invest the time in priority areas. However, you might want to also include a process to ensure that the things you think are important are also important concerning your public interest mandate. - Talk about what’s most important
Once you define what is most important – engage in these discussions. There will be a desire to dive into solutions immediately – resist that. Some decisions don’t need to be made at the start and it’s often best to leave them to a time when relationships are stronger, and trust has been built. - Connect people to shared purpose
When things get off track, it’s important to connect decisions back to your shared purpose. Sometimes it’s as simple as asking “What is the best option in terms of the ability of this new amalgamated entity to protect the public?’. It may seem like a simple question, but it can have profound results.