Most of what a new owner gets right or wrong is decided before the first board meeting. The 100-day plan gets the attention, but the first three weeks set the tone for everything in it.
A 140-line data request tells the finance team you don’t trust the diligence.
In those three weeks, management is deciding whether the new board is a partner or an auditor. The board is deciding whether the CEO can carry the plan. Both sides are reading every meeting, every email and every request for data. I’ve sat in on the first month after more than forty deals, and the ones that went well had very little to do with how good the plan was.
Ask for less data, not more
The instinct after closing is to ask for everything, and management reads it as a vote of no confidence. A data request with 140 lines tells the finance team you don’t trust the diligence, and they’ll spend the next month answering it instead of running the business.
We start with twelve lines: the numbers the board will actually look at every month. Revenue by segment, gross margin, cash, working capital, the three or four operating measures that drive the business, and headcount. If you need more later, ask later. The finance team will notice that you asked for less, and they’ll answer the next request faster.
Decide who decides, first
Before any initiative, agree what the CEO can approve without the board, and what needs a vote. Write it on one page. Every argument I’ve seen in month four started with a decision nobody knew they were allowed to make. The CEO thought she could sign a lease, the board thought it needed to see it, and suddenly a $2 million building is a question of trust.
The page doesn’t need to be clever. Spending limits by category, hiring limits by level, and a short list of things that always come to the board: acquisitions, debt, executive pay and anything that changes the strategy. Agree it in week two and revisit it in month six.
Meet the people who’ll do the work
New owners spend the first weeks with the CEO and CFO, which makes sense. But the plan will be carried out by the people one or two levels down: plant managers, regional leads, the head of sales. If the first time they meet the new board is when an initiative lands on their desk, they’ll treat it as something being done to them.
Spend a day at the largest site. Ask the people there what they’d fix if they could. You’ll hear at least one idea that belongs in the plan, and you’ll have met the people whose names will be on it.
Leave the org chart alone
There’s a strong pull to reorganize early, because it feels like progress and it’s visible. Resist it for at least the first 60 days. A reorganization in month one tells everyone that the old way was wrong before anyone has worked out what the old way was. It also freezes the business while people wait to see where they land.
If someone clearly needs to go, act. Otherwise, let the plan tell you what structure it needs, and change the structure once.
Say out loud what won’t change
Every change of ownership creates rumors, and the rumors are always worse than the plan. People assume the plant will close, the brand will be folded into something else, or the sales team will be cut. Most of the time, none of that is on the table.
So say it. In the first all-hands after closing, the CEO and a board member should name two or three things that won’t change: the name on the building, the sites, the customer commitments, whatever is true. It costs nothing, it’s the most-remembered part of the meeting, and it buys management the room to make the changes that do matter.
Write the first board pack together
The first board pack sets the template for the next five years. If the board designs it alone, management will see it as a report card. If management designs it alone, it’ll be built to reassure rather than inform.
We get the CFO and one board member in a room for two hours in week two and draft it together: the twelve numbers, one page of commentary from the CEO in plain sentences, and a short list of decisions the board is being asked to make. That pack, more than any plan, tells management how this board intends to work.
What to do this week
If you’ve just closed a deal, do three things before the first board meeting. Cut the data request to the numbers you’ll actually read. Write the one-page decision rights and agree them with the CEO. And book a day at the biggest site, with no agenda except listening.
The rest of the plan can wait until week four. These three things can’t.
Keep reading
More essays by the partners on the decisions we see most.
