Private Equity 100-Day Plan Template
Three documents and three sheets that only keep an initiative once it cites a specific diligence finding or underwriting assumption.
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100-Day Plan
[Target Company] — Initiative Register
Every initiative checked against the diligence record for a source before it reaches the board-approved plan.
The sourcing check
| Initiative | Source | Value | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | — | — |
| — | None | — | Pulled |
An initiative with no finding behind it gets flagged before it reaches the board, not after.
Calder Point Capital's operating partner drafted 15 initiatives for the first hundred days at Ashworth Compliance, worth a combined $3,180,000. Checking each one against the diligence record split them: 11 cited a specific finding or underwriting assumption, and 4 did not. Those 4, an OKR rollout, a payroll migration, a website rebrand and an office consolidation, claimed $540,000 combined, each with a confident number and no finding behind it. All 4 were pulled.
Every result on page one for this query is a phased checklist: stabilize in the first thirty days, install an operating rhythm by sixty, execute for a P&L win by ninety. Each pairs that with an EBITDA bridge assigning dollars to five generic levers. None of them checks whether a specific initiative traces to this deal's own diligence record. None checks the reverse direction either: whether a finding diligence actually flagged ever produced an initiative, rather than getting noticed once and dropped on the way to closing.
The arithmetic has gotten less forgiving industry-wide. Bain's 2026 Global Private Equity Report puts a typical buyout's required annual EBITDA growth at 10 to 12 percent now versus 5 percent a decade ago for the same 2.5x return. Holding periods have stretched toward seven years over the same stretch, up from five to six between 2010 and 2021. A plan carrying four items nobody can trace to a finding is exactly the slack that math no longer allows.
What is in the pack
100-Day Plan
Carries the vote from the investment committee memo into a dated, owned plan, opening with the sourcing result stated in dollars rather than assumed
Initiative Register
Every initiative sourced to a specific finding or underwriting line, with the ones that could not be sourced kept visible and flagged rather than quietly dropped
Finding to Action Map
Runs the check in reverse from the diligence record outward, which is how a finding from the customer contract review gets caught if nobody wrote an initiative for it
Milestone Calendar
The board-approved initiatives only, organized by target day rather than by category, so day 30 and day 90 both show what is actually due
Management Brief
The management assessment carried forward from the reference calls run during diligence, tied to whichever initiative it produced or left as an open gap
Governance Setup Note
The standing reporting cadence and any consent or notice obligation diligence found, written to be read on day 400 as easily as on day 30
An initiative with no finding is a guess
The standing rule: a quality of earnings flag with no initiative is a gap, and an initiative with no flag behind it is a guess, whichever direction the check runs
How it works
- 1
Send the deal
The diligence findings or the final investment memo, the underwriting model, the management assessment, and whatever initiatives are already being discussed.
- 2
Check every initiative for a source
Each proposed initiative gets matched to a specific finding or assumption. Anything that cannot be matched is flagged with its claimed value stated plainly, not folded into the total.
- 3
Run the map in reverse
Every finding and assumption gets checked against the register for a matching action, which is how a flag that was noticed once and then dropped gets caught before closing.
- 4
Write the plan and the calendar
The board-approved initiatives carry into the 100-Day Plan by category and into the Milestone Calendar by target day, each one stating its source.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from a standard EBITDA bridge?
An EBITDA bridge assigns dollars to five generic levers: price, mix, share, M&A, cost. It states how much each lever should move, not whether any specific initiative under it actually came from this deal's own diligence. This pack checks that question directly, and pulls or flags anything that cannot answer it.
What happens to an initiative with no diligence finding behind it?
It gets flagged, not deleted. The Initiative Register keeps it visible with its claimed value stated honestly, and the deal team decides whether to keep it anyway once they know it has no source. In the worked example, four such initiatives worth $540,000 combined were pulled from the board-approved plan.
Does the map ever add a new initiative rather than remove one?
Yes, when a diligence finding has no matching action at all. In the worked example, a quality of earnings flag about how onboarding services were booked as revenue had no initiative addressing it, so the map added one rather than letting the finding disappear once the deal closed.
Does this replace the legal work on consent clauses and closing conditions?
No. It tracks that a consent or notice obligation exists and assigns it an owner and a target day, the same way it tracks any other finding. The legal diligence checklist that identified the clause, and the counsel executing on it, do the underlying legal work this pack only schedules.
What does Edit with AI actually do?
It installs the pack as a private space and asks for the diligence findings, the underwriting model and whatever initiatives are already being discussed. The first pass builds the Initiative Register, checks each line for a source, and flags the unsourced ones plus any diligence finding with no initiative at all.
What format are the downloaded files?
The 100-Day Plan, Management Brief and Governance Setup Note download as Word documents; the Initiative Register, Finding to Action Map and Milestone Calendar download as CSV. Word opens in Word, Pages or Google Docs, and the CSVs open in Excel, Numbers or Sheets with every column intact.
Find out how many of your proposed initiatives actually trace to a diligence finding
Send the diligence findings, the underwriting model and the initiatives already being discussed. The first pass checks each one for a source and flags what is missing in either direction.
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