Buying and Fixing
Most acquisitions destroy value. Most turnarounds fail. The companies that succeed at these repeatedly have built something systematic — not just deal skill or operational heroics, but a machine that compounds through acquisition.
This section covers both sides: the assessment discipline that separates good deals from bad, and the operational playbook for the first hundred days and beyond. These are domains where all the other sections converge — you need to read the numbers, set direction, run operations, make decisions, and lead people, often under time pressure and incomplete information.
Where to start
The First Hundred Days — The window when everything is possible and nothing is stable. What to focus on immediately post-close.
Harvest to Growth — The integrated playbook for rebuilding a growth engine in a business that’s been starved of investment.
Acquisitions
How to assess and integrate businesses that compound.
The First Hundred Days — Post-close priorities: what to learn, what to protect, what to change. The window for establishing trust and tempo.
Synergies That Deliver — Most synergy cases are fantasies. What actually drives value, and how to tell the difference.
Organic vs Acquired Growth — Different growth sources have different economics. How to think about the mix.
Turnarounds
How to rebuild a business that’s underperforming.
Harvest to Growth — The complete playbook: find the constraint, protect what works, rebuild the engine. The synthesis of everything else applied to a struggling business.
Fresh Eyes — The advantage of walking in without baggage. What new people see that old hands miss, and how to preserve that perspective.
The Identity Constraint — The binding constraint in most turnarounds isn’t operational — it’s that the team doesn’t believe change is possible. How to shift identity.
Due diligence
The metrics that matter when assessing a target. This draws heavily from Reading the Business.
Unit Economics — Does adding customers create value or consume it? The foundation of whether a business model works.
Recurring Revenue — How hard you have to run just to stand still. The baseline that determines everything.
Gross vs Net Retention — The difference between a leaky bucket and a growing one. Churn versus expansion from existing customers.
Limits to Growth — Every recurring revenue business has a ceiling. Where is it?
FCF Conversion — Do profits become cash? Earnings are accounting. Cash is real.
EBITDA in Software — What the headline numbers hide in software businesses. Why EBITDA needs adjustment.
Case studies
Acquirers — 24 studies of companies that compound through M&A. How Danaher, Constellation, Heico, AMETEK, and others build systematic acquisition machines.
Suggested reading order
If you’re working through this section systematically:
For acquisitions:
- The First Hundred Days — immediate priorities
- Synergies That Deliver — what actually drives value
- Organic vs Acquired Growth — growth source economics
- Due diligence sequence: Unit Economics → Recurring Revenue → Gross vs Net Retention → FCF Conversion
For turnarounds:
- Harvest to Growth — the integrated playbook
- Fresh Eyes — preserving outsider perspective
- The Identity Constraint — shifting team beliefs
- Hidden Bottleneck — finding the real constraint
- Standards, Tempo, Focus — rebuilding operational discipline
Connects to
Reading the Business — Due diligence is applied business reading. The metrics form the backbone of acquisition assessment.
Running the Machine — Integration and turnaround are operational challenges. Flow and constraints determine success.
Leading People — Turnarounds are fundamentally about people. The identity constraint is often the binding constraint in a struggling business.
Making Decisions — Deal decisions are high-stakes predictions. The learning loop matters most when the stakes are highest.