Deal team only
People Integration Plan · Project Halyard
The first hundred days is where the value is kept.
Diligence protects the price. The hundred days after close protect the return. This is the plan: what happens day one, what deliberately waits, and who owns each move.
The read
Sequenced, not stacked. Nothing that can wait, moves early.
Most deals do not lose value in diligence. They lose it in the hundred days after close, when everything gets done at once and nothing gets done well. This plan does the opposite: protect the people who cannot leave, fix only what has a deadline, and start the value creation work before the cleanup is even finished. Here is what a sponsor holds you to by day one hundred.
The hundred-day map
Six workstreams, one sequence.
The three phases
Each one does one job.
Stabilize
- Retain the people you cannot lose, before the announcement
- Communicate once, clearly, to everyone
- Keep systems and payroll running without a hitch
- Hold comp and benefits steady. No surprises in week one
Sequence
- Reclassify and reserve where the clock is already running
- Design the compensation re-architecture before merit
- Map the current operating model as it really works
- Inventory the systems and write the consolidation plan
Build
- Stand up manager capability as a real program
- Name the number-two the CEO needs
- Move to the target operating model, first steps
- Put an owner on every value creation workstream
What breaks it
Three ways a good plan still fails.
Harmonizing carriers in week one saves a rounding error and burns the goodwill of the exact people you are trying to keep. It waits, on purpose, and it is communicated once.
The COO becomes a target the day the deal is announced. If the retention conversation is a month-three item, you have already lost the leverage, and maybe the person.
Integration run out of an administrative HR seat becomes a checklist nobody enforces. It needs an operating owner with the authority to make the moves, not just track them.