Hell and then some deals..

A book titled Deals from Hell by Robert Bruner assigns one or more of these as reasons for a deal to earn the title of a deal from hell: Destruction of market value; financial instability, impaired strategic position, organizational weakness, damaged reputation, or violation of ethical norms and laws. So, looking at these parameters, we would have the highly publicized deals that we know have gone bad and it would be a no-brainer.

What about the deals that have worked well at the start and then faltered along the way? Since the global business environment is constantly changing, will a deal that looks good today also continue to look good in the near or far future? That raises the questions of the time horizon that we would have to look at before rendering our decision. Another question would be the change in management. If a senior executive, who was championing the deal leaves after a few months, would we call it a deal from hell or would we classify it as a leadership issue?

I like the idea of standardization and the classification of aspects that would help us declare a deal a collosal failure. I am just not sure though if it would be a measured objectively if a deal works but circumstances have changed and it’s clearly an issue of mismanagement regardless of the prior deal.