Divorce Corporate Style  Howard was 46, professionally and financially successful, married for 24 years with two kids in college, and he was itchy. Not itchy from a skin rash or from the unreachable spot inside a six-week-old leg cast. Howard was unhappy but didn’t know where to scratch.

He might have gone on for the rest of his life without realizing he was unhappy, but he met Marilyn. She was 31, smart, talented and attractive with her own itch. They met at work and fell in lust.

After six months the lust became love and they were inseparable. She was his prescription-strength hydrocortisone.

Marilyn helped Howard feel good about himself in ways he hadn’t since he was 30, weighed 165 pounds, with the reflexes of a 13 year old Nintendo champion. This would have been a happy story, at least for Howard and Marilyn, if all they wanted was to be together. But they both wanted to build a relationship and raise a family.

Howard was torn between wanting a new life with Marilyn and pangs of loyalty and love he still had for his wife and children. After almost 18 months living parallel lives, Howard finally got up the nerve to tell his wife and children that he was leaving them.

He had thought of all the reasonable answers to every question, how it was no one’s fault, it was just one of “those things.” He would explain how people change, interests change, the world changes. He would argue that this was inevitable that after so many years together they were all different people… so on and so on.

Howard was prepared when the day came to tell his wife. He was well-rehearsed and dispassionately delivered his news like it was a speech. However, he was not at all prepared for his wife’s reaction. For a moment she seemed hurt, maybe even crushed. Then she exploded. She was furious beyond description. While she may eventually have come to understand Howard’s reasons, even to accept his conclusions, she would never, ever forgive the cavalier manner in which he presented his story.

The divorce was horrendous. It took over 18 months just to divide up the property and another year before it was final and Howard and Marilyn could marry.

Howard’s wife and children hated him with a fury that has yet to reach its half life. While Howard no longer had his itch, he has scars that he may never heal.

He could have done things differently, said things differently, to make the experience easier for his wife and children. Did Howard have to cut off and bury his past to build a future? Did he have to spend one-third of his net worth for two lawyers who liked to argue and 55% of what was left to salve the anger and resentment of a woman he once loved and loved him? Was it absolutely unavoidable sending two children out in the world feeling betrayed and abandoned by someone they once trusted beyond logic?

No, it didn’t have to be that way.

Like Howard, the senior officers of corporations have a great deal of time to understand and appreciate the gains to be made by all parties from acquisitions, mergers, and divestitures. They look at change as an opportunity for growth and betterment for everyone involved. Like Howard, most senior officers invest little time and proportionately less money to introduce, explain, and prepare their shareholders, employees, suppliers and customers for a change that will impact all of their lives and businesses.

Preparing and implementing a transition strategy designed to address the concerns of all those involved is mandatory if long-term success is to be a possibility. Statistics prove that organizations, companies and institutions that don’t prepare their constituencies for change are doomed to failure at a catastrophic level. Either by mistrust, self-preservation or sabotage success could be delayed, even postponed, indefinitely.

It would take comparatively little to help those outside of the information circle to appreciate what decisions were made and why– not to seek their approval, but to nurture the trust necessary to gain their participation in doing those things that must be done if success is to be achieved. Doing the right thing for the right reason may not always deliver direct benefits but it will demonstrate to an organization’s constituencies the willingness to include those whose careers, savings and security are at risk.

Advice and Counsel  Essex Two provides strategic communication. We help our clients present themselves to their audiences in ways that promote understanding, appreciation and participation. www.SX2.com

Worth your time:  How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market by Gerald Zaltman. Despite the resources spent on market research, nearly 80 percent of new offerings fail. Customers say they want something, companies create it, and once it’s available, customers don’t buy it. Why... because customers just don’t know what they want? Zaltman concludes that customers do know what they want, but marketing’s tools– surveys, questionnaires, and focus groups– and conventional thinking don’t dig deeply enough to help them discover and express it. The book’s best chapter is “Memory, Metaphor, and Stories” and it has some useful concepts that can put into practice today.