Not every decision in the first hundred days is equally urgent, but most integration plans treat them as if they were. A list emerges, the list becomes a schedule, and the schedule usually follows the organizational structure rather than the question of what waiting actually costs. That is a different sorting than sorting by cost of uncertainty, and the difference often determines where the team gets stuck in week six.
A decision has a cost of uncertainty if keeping it open holds other things back. No system chosen means no reporting set up. No role filled means three people below it don't know who they report to. Those costs keep accruing, even if nobody is looking at them. They cannot be expressed in money without assumptions you don't have, and that is precisely why sorting by cost of uncertainty is different from sorting by estimated financial importance. It is about what gets stuck as long as the decision isn't made, not about how big the decision itself feels.
Before a decision gets a place in the sequence, there is a question that cannot be skipped: does this actually need to be combined. Some decisions seem urgent because they're on the synergy list, while the underlying functions could perfectly well keep running separately. Uncertainty about a decision that doesn't need to be made costs nothing. So the sorting doesn't start with speed, but with a second look at the assumption that integration is needed here.
The synergy baseline, the Day 1 plan and the Day 100 plan are three generators that map out decisions, link them to dependencies and give them a status. They do not calculate cost of uncertainty in monetary terms, because the figures specific to your deal are missing for that. What they do provide is the structure with which you make that judgment yourself: which decisions block other decisions, which decisions stand on their own, and which decisions only become relevant after something else has been resolved. That structure is the tool. The judgment remains yours.
A good sequence does not come from prioritizing everything, but from finding out what is waiting on what. You will find that overview in the answer to which dependencies block the rest of the integration, where decisions are not standalone but part of a chain. A decision that doesn't seem urgent on its own may still need to be at the front because five other decisions are waiting on it. Conversely, a decision that draws a lot of attention may in practice only become relevant after another part has been completed. Sorting by cost of uncertainty therefore also means: sorting by what it frees up for the rest.
A sequence that is correct on day one is not automatically correct on day forty. New information shifts the cost of delay, and someone has to notice that shift before the schedule gets stuck on it. That is a separate question from who makes which decision, and those two questions are addressed in the overview of which decisions belong in the first hundred days and who ensures they get made. Without an owner for guarding the sequence itself, any sorting dilutes after a few weeks into the old list with a date on it.
Cost of uncertainty is an estimate made in advance, not a guarantee. There are decisions you put at the front because you think delay is expensive, and that still remain unresolved because information is missing or the owner changes. That is not a failure of the sorting, it is a given that the sorting must be able to handle. What to do when the hundred-day target isn't met is described on the page about what you do if the Day 100 plan isn't achieved on time, and that question belongs to the sorting just as much as the sequence itself does. A plan that leaves no room for delay is not a plan, it is a wish with a date attached.
The generators and the integration office do not deliver a proven approach, because that track record does not exist. What they do deliver is a way to lay decisions side by side, see what is waiting on what, and keep asking the question of whether something needs to be combined instead of checking it off once. This tool is under construction. Anyone who wants to work with it as soon as it becomes available can sign up for the waiting list.
Once the sequence of decisions is fixed, the question remains of who actually carries out the work. During an integration, tasks shift, duplicate roles emerge, and manual work becomes visible that was previously hidden within two organizations. The work scan from FTE TO AI calculates per task which part of it can be taken over by AI, providing an additional picture alongside the decision sequence: not just what needs to be decided when, but also how much of the underlying work will still need people going forward.
Vraag maar wat er op Day 1 moet staan, of wat integreren juist kapotmaakt.
Answers come from this site’s knowledge base. Not tailored advice, and not a scan of your company.