The plan is modelled in detail; the organisation asked to deliver it is usually described in a paragraph.
Why it matters when the plan changes
A value-creation plan is unusually specific about what will happen and unusually vague about who will do it. Revenue moves, cost programmes and bolt-on sequencing are all priced. The decisions each move depends on, and whether anyone holds them, are left to be worked out after completion, once the clock has started. Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull found that only eleven per cent of managers believe their company's strategic priorities carry the resources needed for success; a plan typically meets an organisation already committed elsewhere.
The tension is that the plan is written by the party with least access to the organisation. An investor knows the market and the numbers well, and meets the organisation across a data room. The specificity of the plan and the thinness of the organisational evidence behind it are furthest apart at signing. Due diligence, the investigation expected before entering an agreement, rarely extends to whether the organisation can carry what the plan asks.
In practice
A plan commits to three price increases and a bolt-on in the first year. All three price moves depend on a commercial decision that used to be made by the former parent. The new structure has two candidates for that decision and no rule. The first quarter is spent establishing who decides, which the model had priced at zero.
Evidence
Stated priorities are widely believed not to be properly resourced, which is the state a plan meets when it arrives at an organisation already committed elsewhere.
Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull, Why Strategy Execution Unravels and What to Do About It, Harvard Business Review (2015)Due diligence is the investigation expected before entering an agreement, and the organisational capacity to deliver the plan is rarely inside its scope.
Due diligence, Wikipedia (2026)
What it cannot tell you
A value-creation plan describes intended commercial and operational moves and their timing; it says nothing about whether the organisation asked to deliver them holds the decision rights, capacity or sequencing to do so. A plan can be well modelled and financially sound while remaining silent on whether anyone currently owns the decisions it depends on.
Questions
The investor, usually with the management team's input and sometimes with an adviser. It is agreed at or near completion and becomes the reference the business is measured against, which means it is written at the point of least access to how the organisation actually runs.
The decisions each move depends on, and who holds them. Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull reported in Harvard Business Review in 2015 that only eleven per cent of managers believed their priorities had the resources needed for success; value-creation plans meet organisations in the same state, ownership left for later.
Before commitment, when the answer can still change the plan or the price, and again at any of the events that materially change what the plan asks: a new operating model, a new dependency, sustained new pressure or material new evidence.
Yes, usually more than once, and each revision changes what the organisation must deliver. Due diligence, as defined on Wikipedia in 2026, covers the investigation expected before an agreement, not what happens after; once the plan changes, an earlier reading of readiness is out of date whether or not anyone revisits it.
The value-creation plan covers the whole holding period; the 100-day plan is its opening sequence. The first hundred days decide which of the later moves stay available, which is why an unowned decision in that window is more expensive than its size suggests.