Public Pilots

Context

Many leadership teams are finalizing 2026 operating plans right now under compressed timelines and incomplete signal resolution. The risk in this environment is not insufficient action — it's locking interpretive assumptions too early.

What We're Seeing

Across multiple industries, plans are being finalized with three common characteristics:

1. Ambiguity is treated as a cost, rather than as stored optionality
2. Control mechanisms are front-loaded, reducing learning bandwidth in Q1
3. Risk mitigation is expressed as rigidity, not staged reversibility

None of these choices look wrong in isolation. Collectively, they create concave exposure.

Why This Matters

Once interpretive assumptions are encoded into budgets, incentives, and operating rhythms, they become self-reinforcing. By mid-Q1, teams are no longer responding to pressure — they're responding to the plan's original interpretation of pressure.

At that point, even correct signals are misread.

Where Value Is Quietly Leaking

The biggest losses don't show up as visible failures. They appear as:

• Delayed recognition of regime change
• Over-investment in "clarity" that turns out to be false
• Teams optimizing execution against the wrong frame

By the time these effects surface, reversal costs are already high.

A Small, High-Leverage Adjustment

Before locking Q1 execution paths, isolate:

• Which assumptions must be true
• Which assumptions are merely convenient
• Where reversibility can be preserved at low cost

This doesn't require new strategy — only a reframing of how uncertainty is carried forward.

Why This Is Timely

This adjustment is only cheap before execution begins. Once the system commits, optionality collapses.

Context

As deals move from signing toward Day-1 and Day-30 integration milestones, leadership teams face intense pressure to "stabilize" operations quickly. The common response is to impose early structure, controls, and uniform processes across the combined entity.

This feels prudent. It often isn't.

What We're Seeing

In many integrations, value erosion begins before synergies are missed. It starts when:

• Control is prioritized over learning
• Standardization precedes signal extraction
• Cultural alignment is enforced before operational reality is understood

These choices reduce visible risk — while increasing hidden convex loss.

Why This Matters

Pre-close and early integration periods are the highest-signal windows of the entire transaction. This is when:

• Informal workflows reveal real dependencies
• Talent behavior exposes incentive mismatches
• Customers telegraph where fragility actually sits

Locking structure too early collapses this learning window permanently.

Where Value Quietly Leaks

Losses rarely show up as immediate failures. They surface later as:

• Missed upside masked as "integration success"
• Cultural attrition misattributed to execution issues
• Synergies achieved — but at a lower ceiling than possible

By the time leadership notices, the interpretive frame is already fixed.

A Low-Friction Adjustment

Instead of immediate uniformity, designate one or two functions as protected learning zones for the first 30–60 days:

• Minimal structural imposition
• Explicit permission to observe variance
• Delayed convergence decisions

This preserves optionality without delaying integration timelines.

Why Timing Is Everything

This adjustment is nearly free before Day-1. After systems and incentives harden, it becomes politically and operationally expensive.

The Subtle Point

Most integrations fail not because leaders act too slowly — but because they act decisively on incomplete interpretation.

In the earliest phase post-close, the system is still honest:

• Informal workflows reveal where real dependencies live
• Talent behavior surfaces incentive mismatches
• Customers signal which changes matter — and which don't

A small adjustment I've seen work well is treating one or two functions as protected learning zones early on:

• Minimal structural imposition
• Explicit permission to observe variance
• Delayed convergence decisions