The Merger & Acquisition Leader's Playbook

CHAPTER 26Adjustments: Because You'll Need Them

The fifth component of the change management playbook is adjustments. Things change.

Once you've implemented systems to track; assess; adjust daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually; and thought through your ongoing communication, don't confuse communicating with operating cadences. Do avoid the public company sprint to do things just ahead of quarterly earnings calls, instead, staying ahead of the curve at all times.

Ideally you will have put in place a balanced scorecard to look at destination, objectives, strategic links, initiatives, and measures by the following segments:

• Financial (e.g., revenue, cash flow, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization [EBITDA], return on investment [ROI])
• Customer (e.g., sales from new products, on-time delivery, share, customer concentration)
• Internal business processes (e.g., cycle time, unit cost, yield, new product development)
• Learning and growth (e.g., time to market, product life cycle)

Recall, you'll likely want to follow up

• Daily for individual tasks done by workers (or more frequently in a crisis)
• Weekly for projects managed by first-line supervisors and made up of tasks
• Monthly for programs managed by middle managers, made up of discrete projects
• Quarterly with overall business reviews so senior leadership can adjust priorities and resource allocations ...