The first meeting sets everything. Most CEOs don't know it yet.
There is a conversation that happens in the first 72 hours that determines the shape of the next 100 days. Most newly appointed CEOs walk into it without knowing it is happening.
What the data shows, what the room reveals, and what thirty years of watching organisations integrate has made visible.
Every acquisition comes with an org chart. The org chart is a diagram of what the deal team decided. It is not a diagram of how decisions actually get made.
When you acquire a business, you do not inherit it. You create something new — a third entity with no history, no shared language, no agreed way of making decisions. Most integration plans treat this as a project management problem.
The difference between those two sentences is the difference between a presentation and a diagnostic. The first is about what you say. The second is about what you learn.
If any of this reflects what you are navigating —
the conversation is worth having.