How to Recover From a Bad Business Deal

Bad deals happen to good people. Perhaps your company responded to industry changes with a good-on-paper strategy that failed to be transformational. Maybe some of the big guns made decisions based on high-up relationships but failed to foster the integration of corporate cultures. Or maybe conducting due diligence became more about reviewing financial statements than strategically analyzing a deal's logic. Whatever the case may be, deals don't always work as planned.

What next? Recovery. Don't panic. It doesn't take 12 steps. In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, there are only three steps -- and they're pretty simple to follow.
Step 1: Denial -- Step 2: Acceptance -- Step 3: Recovery
In illustration of the simple process, WSJ analyzes (what it calls) one of the worst business deals of all time -- Boston Scientific's $25 billion purchase of defibrillator maker Guidant in 2006. Massive layoffs are afoot but the company finally seems to be rebounding.