Where this fits
Demand → Pricing → Cash → EBITDA → Network → Visibility → Value
The first 90 days in a CEO or Operating Partner role determine whether performance is stabilised or continues to drift. This is how that work gets done.
The first 90 days determine the outcome.
A plan built on assumptions creates confident momentum in the wrong direction. The underlying commercial and operational drivers need to be understood before initiatives are committed.
What happens is the first 90 days get absorbed by integration overhead rather than diagnosing what drives performance — and by day 91, the value creation agenda is already running behind plan. The connection between early diagnosis and post-acquisition integration performance determines whether execution momentum holds through the transition.
If the diagnosis is wrong at the start, every action that follows is misaligned. A wrong assumption at day one compounds across the hold.
→ Start with the diagnosticThis 90-day CEO plan is designed for private equity-backed and founder-led industrial and distribution businesses where operational execution is the primary value creation lever.
Most businesses don’t have a strategy problem. They have a control problem. Pricing leakage calculator breaks down. Working Capital Calculator accumulates. Performance scalability drifts. The business underperforms not because the direction was wrong but because no one enforced the disciplines that make the direction work.
Performance doesn’t drift. It leaks — through uncontrolled discounting, working capital that accumulates unchecked, and a management cadence that loses its edge. By the time it is visible, the compounding has already started.
The objective in the first 90 days is simple — restore control, stop cash leakage and establish a performance baseline the board can rely on. Left unaddressed, margin erosion, trapped cash and misallocated capital compound every quarter. Most businesses that fail to recover don’t fail because the problems were too large. They fail because the problems were not addressed early enough.
The instinct is to act. The discipline is to understand first — fast.
I move through the commercial and financial engine of the business quickly. Pricing realisation versus list. Gross margin by customer and product line. Working capital against benchmarks. Forecast integrity. Management capability and alignment.
By day 30, there is a quantified view of where cash and EBITDA are being lost. Not assumptions. Numbers. That view determines everything that follows. Without it, the decisions in days 31–60 are made on instinct — and instinct is how businesses end up in a performance recovery in the first place.
The Value Creation Diagnostics quantify pricing leakage, working capital position and growth capacity — producing the numbers that drive the board conversation in days 31–60.
This is where the business either turns or continues to drift.
This is where the business either turns or continues to drift. The diagnostic is done. Now decisions are made and accountability is set.
Pricing leakage is measured against actual realisations — not estimated. Working capital benchmarks are applied to the balance sheet. Underperforming segments are addressed: restructured where there is a path, exited where there is not. Capital does not sit in areas that cannot return it.
Pricing governance is implemented: approval thresholds set, discount authorities defined, price realisation tracked against list weekly with no exceptions. Debtor collection is tightened. Slow inventory is identified and moved. Supplier terms are renegotiated on DPO. The operating rhythm is installed — weekly cadence, short-cycle reporting, no ambiguity on what the numbers mean or who owns them.
This is where the board conversation happens. True performance is put on the table against the assumptions brought into the business. There is no ambiguity and no debate — the numbers are what they are. Gaps are owned. The value creation plan is set lever by lever, a named owner on each, a single defensible number at the centre. There is no remaining ambiguity. The board leaves with clarity, not questions.
If this alignment does not happen by day 60, the business will not perform in the back half of the year. The plan will exist but not be executed. That is the consequence of a missed inflection point.
By day 60 there is one number — a clear, agreed EBITDA improvement figure with board alignment. The Pricing Leakage Calculator and Working Capital Calculator are the basis for that number.
Execution. Not planning, not review — the changes are made and embedded so they hold after the mandate ends.
Pricing: Every discount requires approval above threshold. Price realisation is reported weekly against list. Exceptions are escalated, not ignored. The gap between list and net closes.
Inventory: Slow-moving stock is identified, aged and actioned. Ordering disciplines are set against actual demand, not forecast habit. Inventory days reduce. Cash is released.
Credit and debtors: Terms are enforced. Collection cadence is weekly. Overdue accounts are escalated on a defined schedule. DSO comes down — not gradually, decisively.
Small leaks compound into material erosion. A 2% discount that goes untracked becomes structural. An inventory line that is not actioned sits on the balance sheet for quarters. A debtor that is not followed becomes a write-off. These are not edge cases — they are the normal condition of a business without control mechanisms in place.
The operating cadence is locked — weekly leadership rhythm, monthly board pack, named owners on every KPI. This is control, not reporting. Reporting describes what happened. Control determines what happens next. The board has line-of-sight to performance at every level — if a number is off, the owner is named and the response is immediate. Growth capital is committed only where unit economics justify it. The branch-level economics run before capital is deployed, not after.
The early warning signs of drift are visible now. The cadence catches them before they compound. Pricing holds faster EBITDA improvement than any other lever — and the governance from days 31–60 means it holds.
EBITDA improvement, cash release and growth capacity are aggregated into a single enterprise value view using the Value creation diagnostic — the board-ready number that closes the plan.
At 90 days the business is not the same business it was at day one. Performance is predictable. Ownership of outcomes is clear. The board is not managing by assumption — it is managing by fact. That is what control looks like.
The business is under control, with predictable performance and clear ownership of outcomes. These are not projections. They are identified, quantified and owned opportunities — built from the diagnostic work in the first 30 days and executed through the following 60.
These are not projections. They are identified, quantified and owned — built from the diagnostic in the first 30 days and executed through the following 60. At this point, strategy is not a separate exercise. It is the output of operational truth — knowing exactly where the business performs, and allocating capital accordingly.
This is value that already exists in the business. It was just not being realised.
A business with pricing discipline holds margin. A business with working capital control has cash. A business with a locked operating cadence has predictable performance.
Those are not aspirations. They are the direct outputs of the work described above — measurable within 90 days in most industrial and distribution businesses.
The Value creation diagnostic puts these into a single enterprise value view. That number is the board deliverable. It is built from the diagnostic, validated through execution, and owned by the business.
This is how I operate when I step into a business. Not how I advise. Not how I recommend. How I operate. This is the standard I work to.
The focus is consistent — identify where EBITDA is being lost, stop cash leakage, and install the disciplines that restore performance and hold it.
Pricing, working capital and execution cadence are not separate initiatives. They are the core drivers of performance and are managed together. The tools on this site are used to quantify, prioritise and execute — not to analyse from a distance.
“Most businesses don’t lack opportunity. They lack control. When control is established, value creation becomes repeatable and controlled.”
Available for PE-backed and founder-led industrial businesses across Australia and APAC.
Review your situation → Operating Partner mandatesIf you are stepping into a new role or reviewing performance, start by identifying where EBITDA and cash are being lost.
A 90-day CEO plan for an industrial or distribution business is not a strategic review. It is an operating reset — focused on EBITDA improvement, working capital discipline and commercial execution. The pricing leakage, cash trapped in debtors and inventory, and margin erosion from poor capital allocation are identifiable, quantifiable and correctable within 90 days in most businesses.
For PE-backed businesses, the first 90 days of an operating partner mandate set the trajectory for the entire hold period. The value creation plan agreed in this window becomes the document the board and fund use to track performance. Getting the diagnosis right, and the board aligned on true performance, is the most important commercial act of the mandate.
For founder-led businesses entering a performance recovery, the same logic applies. The 90-day window is where structural improvements are made — pricing governance, working capital discipline, operating cadence — before the business drifts further. The tools on this site are built for exactly this context: industrial and distribution businesses in Australia and APAC where operational execution is the primary value creation lever.
I don't rely on opinion — I quantify value creation pathways. These tools are what I use in the first 30 days of every operating partner mandate.
Execution cadence is typically the first operating system installed in the first 90 days — the regular rhythms that allow management to perform consistently without constant intervention.
The value creation plan built in the first 90 days is ultimately measured against EBITDA and enterprise value — improving earnings quality during the hold determines what the business is worth at exit.
Identifying the gap between reported and normalised EBITDA is one of the first diagnostic tasks in any value creation mandate — it defines the improvement opportunity and sets the baseline for the 90-day plan.
The first 90 days set the trajectory for the entire private equity value creation mandate — cadence, diagnosis and the value creation plan are all established in this window.
The first 90 days of an operating mandate maps directly to operational due diligence readiness — closing the gaps that ODD would find before a buyer's process applies them as valuation adjustments.
The Operating Partner Library™ is the deployment toolkit for a 90-day value creation mandate — framework by framework, phase by phase, the operating architecture for the first quarter of any engagement.
The first 90 days of a PE mandate are spent building the evidence that matches what private equity looks for in a business at exit — the same criteria applied at entry are the same criteria tested when the business goes back to market.