Buying your rival; not the bias 



After competing for decades, two rival companies merge. They have told so many “fantastic” stories about each other no one knows what to believe. Employees are alert for anything that looks like a pattern that will verify their suspicions. They had developed a strong bias against the way each approached clients, conducted research and marketed products it is hard for anyone to imagine working together.

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Making it more tenuous, people are waiting for the other shoe to drop – layoffs or pay cuts; product cancellations or changes to the Sales comp plan. The new leadership has promised investors significant "synergies," so employees are looking for the patterns that support their bias.

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Instead, the leadership brings their top 200 employees together for a “Shared History” session, in which people from the two companies build the story of their shared struggles and victories.

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The session starts with two employees from each company with 40 years of experience describing the main challenges the businesses faced when they started. Then four employees with 30+ years, and so on.

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Along the way myths are destroyed, some patterns are verified and others are given context. By demonstrating respect for each company's struggles, they begin to accept that one side didn't have to be wrong for the other side to be right.

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A graphic facilitator captured the histories and the diagram was hung in break rooms throughout the company – a step together toward a shared vision of the future.