Private equity 100-day plan: people and organisation

The people and organisation workstream of a 100-day value creation plan answers one question: can this company, with these people, deliver the investment thesis? It covers the leadership team, the few roles the plan depends on, the operating model and org design, incentives, culture and how the plan is explained to staff. Do the management assessment in the first month, hear from employees below the top team by Day 45, and come back at Day 100 with decisions made and a baseline to measure against.

Value creation plan: how do you include people and organisation in the first 100 days?

Treat it as a workstream with an owner, a timeline and outputs, the same as pricing or procurement. Most plans already have a line on the CEO and CFO. What gets missed is everything below them: the plant manager who holds the night shift together, the two engineers who understand the billing system, the regional sales team whose commission plan works against the margin target.

The investors and the company often disagree about where to start. In an AlixPartners survey on the first 100 days (2019), portfolio company respondents ranked assessing the management team as their second priority, while PE firms put it sixth. Half of the portfolio company respondents chose analysing the company culture, against 19% of PE firms. Both sides agreed that aligning the CEO and CFO on strategy came first.

What goes into the people and organisation workstream?

Leadership team

Bain frames the question well: is this team fit for this plan? In How private equity funds can nurture better leaders (2018), Bain argues that portfolio company outperformance is strongly correlated with having the right team in place at the start of ownership, and that firms struggle to make early talent decisions in the C-suite and other critical roles. Decide early. McKinsey’s Marla Capozzi notes in Build versus buy (2026) that portfolio company CEO turnover has stayed around 60 to 70 percent over 15 years, and that a new CEO search can take six to 12 months. If you are not going to replace someone, say so and invest in them.

Key talent

List the roles the plan cannot do without. For a field services carve-out that might be the dispatch lead, the person who runs the pricing model and the IT manager who knows which systems still belong to the former parent. Check whether they are staying, and what would keep them.

Org design and operating model

Who decides what, and where the work actually sits. A carve-out often has no finance or HR function of its own. A buy-and-build platform has three ways of doing the same job. BCG makes the point in The 100-day cost reset in private equity (2026) that traditional cost programmes cut headcount without looking at how work actually gets done, and that the strongest programmes use what they find to redesign the operating model.

Incentives

Management equity is usually settled at close. The incentives below it are not. Check whether sales commission, site bonuses and promotion rules pull in the same direction as the plan. A depot rewarded for on-time delivery will not care about fuel cost unless someone changes what it is measured on.

Culture

Keep it practical. Look at how decisions get made and what happens when someone raises a problem. Those habits set the pace of every other workstream. Our post on portfolio company culture assessment covers how to assess them.

Communication

Employees will fill any silence about the new owner with rumour. Decide what the plan means for each group of staff, who tells them and when. Then check it landed.

What does a first 100 days plan for people look like, week by week?

Before close

Turn diligence findings into a short list: leadership decisions to make, key roles at risk, known gaps in the operating model. Agree with the CEO who owns the workstream.

Weeks 1 to 4: leadership and key roles

Assess the management team against the plan. Agree how the sponsor and the CEO will work together; McKinsey’s research on PE-backed CEOs finds that those who start well in the first 100 days understand the sponsor’s operating model and expectations early. Name the key roles and have retention conversations with the people in them. Explain the plan to all staff.

Weeks 4 to 8: hear from the organisation

Interview employees across sites and functions about how work gets done, what they have heard about the plan and what slows them down. Map decision rights. Compare incentives with plan targets.

Weeks 8 to 12: decide

Settle the org design changes, incentive changes and any leadership moves. Tell people what you heard and what you are doing about it.

Weeks 12 to 14: Day 100 review

Check progress against the measures below and set the people priorities for the rest of the first year.

How do you hear from employees beyond the management team?

The management team will tell you a lot. It is still one view, and they know they are being assessed. Site visits help, though people say little to the new owner’s operating partner with their manager in the room. A survey gives you scores but no reasons.

Confidential one-on-one interviews with a broad group work best: a sample from every site and function, or everyone if the company is small enough. Promise confidentiality and keep it. Report by team and theme, never by person, and show nothing for groups too small to protect individuals.

This is where AI interviews fit, and it is the part we build. Spradley invites every employee by email or Slack to a one-on-one interview by text or voice, on their own phone or computer. The interviewer asks a follow-up on each answer, so “the plan won’t work here” comes with the reason. The report groups answers into themes with the quotes behind them, lets you compare functions or sites, and never shows numbers or ratings for fewer than five people. It will not tell you whether the CFO is the right CFO; that still needs your own assessment. Workers with no email or Slack account also need another route. More on the private equity page.

What questions should you ask employees in the first 100 days?

Pick six to eight. Ask the same ones in every site and function so you can compare.

The deal and the plan

1. What have you been told about the new owner’s plans, and by whom?
2. In your own words, what does the company need to do well over the next few years?
3. What part of the plan do you think will be hardest in your area?

Leadership

1. What does the leadership team do well?
2. Where do you need more from leadership than you get today?
3. How have decisions been made since the deal, and what has changed?

How work gets done

1. What slows you down that leadership might not see?
2. Who do you go to when something goes wrong, and why them?
3. Where would one change save the most time or money in your area?
4. What still depends on the former owner or parent company?

Incentives and recognition

1. What are you measured on, and does that match what you think matters most?
2. What gets someone promoted here?

Staying

1. What would make you want to stay for the next three years?
2. What, if anything, would make you consider leaving?

For a merger or add-on, our post on the post-merger integration survey for the first 100 days has questions for the two companies coming together.

How do you measure progress at Day 100?

Pick measures you can check without a consultant. A good Day 100 review answers five things:

• Leadership decisions made, including who stays, who is coached and which roles are being hired.
• Key-role retention: how many of the named people are still there and committed.
• Operating model changes agreed, with owners and dates.
• Incentives changed where they worked against the plan.
• What employees say about the plan, compared with the first round: whether more people can explain it, and whether the blockers they named are being fixed.

The last one needs a second round of the same interview. Run it around Day 100 and again a year in. The useful finding is the change: which worries have gone, which teams still have not heard the plan, and where it is stuck.

Frequently asked questions

Key terms

value creation plan

The plan a private equity owner agrees with management for how the company will grow in value during the hold, with priorities, owners and dates.

investment thesis

The case for why a private equity fund bought a company and how it expects to increase the company’s value.

operating partner

A private equity professional who works with portfolio companies on operations and management rather than on doing deals.

operating model

How a company is organised to do its work: who decides what, where the work sits and how functions connect.

carve-out

A business separated from a larger parent and run as a standalone company. It often starts without functions of its own, such as finance or HR.

buy-and-build

A private equity strategy of buying a platform company and growing it through further, usually smaller, acquisitions.