Integration plans tend to be long lists of tasks. Long lists of tasks tend to slip. We run integrations using a method called Commitment-Based Management, and it is the biggest single reason our integrations finish when we say they will.
The idea
Commitment-Based Management treats an organisation as a network of conversations. Work moves when one person makes a clear request of another, the other makes a clear promise in return, and the work is later declared complete and accepted. Every piece of work has a customer and a performer, a defined outcome and a date.
It sounds obvious. In practice most organisations run on vaguer things: actions noted in meetings, emails that may or may not have been read, tasks with an owner but no customer. Nobody is quite sure who has agreed to what.
Why it matters most in an acquisition
An acquisition multiplies that ambiguity. Two teams, two sets of habits, new reporting lines, and a founder who may be stepping back. Everyone is busy and everyone is unsure who decides. A task list cannot fix that. Clear commitments can.
How we use it
Every integration workstream — finance, systems, clients, people — is expressed as a set of requests and promises between named individuals, each with a condition of satisfaction and a date. A request can be accepted, declined or met with a counter-offer, but it cannot be left hanging. When something is done, it is declared complete and the person who asked confirms they are satisfied.
Progress is reviewed on a weekly rhythm. The question is not how it is going, but which promises are due, which have been kept and which need renegotiating. Renegotiating is encouraged. A promise that will be missed, flagged early, is a manageable problem. One discovered late is not.
What changes
People know what they have agreed to, and to whom. Leaders can see where work is actually stuck rather than relying on status updates. And trust builds quickly between teams that have only just been put together, because they see each other keep their word.
After integration, the method does not go away. It becomes how the portfolio company is run — part of the operating model every business in the group shares.