- Topic
- Leadership
- Published
- 16 September 2025
- Reading time
- 4 minutes
- By
- Everston Partners
In short
- Almost nine in ten private equity firms use a 100-day plan, and many of the worries it creates are about people, not numbers.
- Most investors use the first hundred days to protect continuity, not to launch change.
- We listen first, agree three priorities with management, and change as little as possible at the start.
A deal closes on a single day. The company lives with the consequences for years. The first hundred days are when the new owner and the management team find out whether they will work well together, and the habits formed in that window tend to last.
Most firms plan for it
In a 2013 survey by Grant Thornton and PitchBook of more than 170 senior private equity professionals, almost 90 percent said they use a 100-day plan. The plan is usually drawn up during due diligence or soon after the acquisition. Almost half of the respondents also said the extra workload from new processes worries management teams.1
That last point is easy to miss. A plan that looks sensible from the owner's side can look like a pile of new reports from the management side.
Slower than you might expect
A more recent survey by the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal, of 65 senior executives at private equity firms and portfolio companies in Germany, France and the UK, found that only 22 percent launch a value creation programme immediately. Another 46 percent use the first hundred days to manage continuity risk and start after six months, and 32 percent stabilise the business in the first year and launch in the second.2
The same survey found that 57 percent prefer to let the existing management team review the due diligence and build the plan before closing, and only 14 percent bring in new key executives from day one.2 Alvarez & Marsal sells advice on these programmes, and the sample is small, so we read the figures as a signal of practice, not a rule.
What we listen for first
- What management would keep exactly as it is, and what they have wanted to change for years.
- What the team is worried about. Settling structure and roles early reduces anxiety about jobs and the risk that good people leave before the dust settles.3
- How customers and suppliers describe the company, in their words and not ours.
- What did not come up in due diligence.
What we change, and what we leave alone
We change three things in the first hundred days, and we agree them with management first:
- Three priorities, written down, with an owner for each.
- A reporting rhythm that management can sustain. In the Alvarez & Marsal survey, monthly financial and KPI reporting was the most common way investors gain confidence, cited by 80 percent.2
- A clear answer to every employee's question about their own role.
We leave the culture alone. A 2015 integration guide from Axial points out that full cultural alignment will not happen in the first hundred days, and that trying to force it only creates friction.3 It is better to learn how the company works before deciding what, if anything, should change.
Key takeaway: the first hundred days are for listening and agreeing a few priorities. Big changes can wait until we have earned the right to propose them.
If you are preparing for a change of ownership and want to talk about how the first months should go, we would like to hear from you.
Sources
1. Grant Thornton and PitchBook, "What can be done in 100 days?", October 2013. Read the survey
2. Steffen Kroner, Bob Rajan and Stefan Lacher, "Delivering Transformational Value Creation in Private Equity-Sponsored Companies: A European Perspective," Alvarez & Marsal, December 2021. Read the report
3. Axial, "100 Days Later: Identifying Post-Acquisition Cultural Objectives," 11 March 2015. Read the article