The plan assumes a pace. Can the company take it?
Most value creation plans are sound. What they rarely test is whether the company can absorb them at the speed the model assumes. The ECI measures that, before you sign and after you own it.
Execution coherence is how much of a company's speed turns into results, and how much is lost on the way to them. It is a bigger variable in deal outcomes than it looks, because it does not appear in any of the numbers you are already being shown.
A business can have a defensible market, a sound plan and a capable management team, and still return less than the model says, because decisions take longer than anyone assumed, get reopened after they are made, and arrive on top of more change than the company can carry. None of that is visible in a quality of earnings report.
There are two moments where measuring it changes a decision. Before you sign, when the question is whether the pace in the model is realistic. And after you own it, when the question is what to fix first.
ECI-IVD: the pre-deal read
A bounded piece of work on the deal timetable, written for an investment committee rather than for a management team.
The question it answers. Can this company absorb the integration, the buy and build, or the growth plan this deal needs, at the pace the return model assumes? And if not, which of the four dimensions is the reason?
What you get.
A scored read across the four ECI dimensions, with the evidence grade shown against each one, so you can see what rests on records and what rests on judgement.
The dimension most likely to constrain the plan, with the reasoning set out.
What that implies for the first hundred days, and for the pace assumptions in the model.
A short written opinion an investment committee can read as a paper, not a deck to be walked through.
What it takes. Two to three weeks. A session with the management team, and access to whatever the data room holds on decision records, approval trails, plan against actual, and the initiative portfolio.
What limits it, stated plainly. Pre-deal you do not get the records. Most of a pre-deal read therefore rests on sessions and on what the data room holds, which is judgement and proxy rather than hard measurement. We grade every part of the score accordingly and the grade travels with the number, so nothing is presented as harder than it is. An adviser who offers you a confident pre-deal score on this without the records is offering you an opinion wearing a number.
ECI-IV: the integration read
Run in the first ninety days after close, when the records exist and the measurement can be properly made.
The question it answers. The plan is now yours. Which of the four dimensions is going to stop it landing, how big is that, and what is the order to address it in?
What you get. The full Baseline, scored and banded across the four dimensions, at company level and for each leadership team taking part. The dimension holding the others back. What it is costing, mapped through to where it shows up financially: delayed revenue, margin lost to rework, capital deployed without compounding, timing risk on commitments already made. And a route for the next ninety days.
Where it leads. The 90-Day Coherence Build moves the constraint, and the same measures are re-taken at day ninety so you can see whether it worked rather than agreeing that it felt better. How the Build runs.
Across the portfolio
The version of this that matters most is the one that runs more than once.
Measured the same way across several companies, execution coherence becomes something you can act on at portfolio level rather than company by company. Which assets are carrying more change than they can absorb. Where a bolt-on is about to land on a company that cannot take it. Which management teams are spending their own time settling arguments that should never reach them.
Run at the same point in each hold period, it also becomes evidence. A documented improvement in how well a company turns decisions into delivered results is part of the story at exit, and unlike most operational improvement claims it has a number attached and a method behind it.
We would rather start with one company than with a portfolio. One read, done properly, tells you whether this is worth repeating.
Where this sits next to the diligence you already run
Commercial diligence tests whether the market is there. Financial diligence tests whether the numbers are real. Operational diligence tests whether the machine works.
None of them tests whether the company can decide and act at the speed the plan assumes, which is a different property and often the binding one. A business can pass all three and still miss, because the constraint is not the market, the numbers or the machine. It is how long a decision takes, whether it holds once made, how much work gets redone, and how much is already running.
This does not replace any of them. It measures the thing they leave out.
What we will not do
No league tables across your portfolio. Companies are never ranked against each other, and we will decline the request when it comes. Ranked scores stop measuring anything within one cycle, because everyone learns what a good answer looks like. That holds across a portfolio exactly as it holds across teams inside one company.
No scoring of individuals. This measures how decisions travel, not who is good. It is not an input to a management change, we will not present it as one, and we will say so to the management team before they take part. If they think the instrument is a personnel exercise they will answer accordingly and the number will be worthless to you.
No score without its grade. Every part of the read carries where it came from. You will always know which parts are hard and which are judged.
What we do not claim
The ECI is new. There is no benchmark database behind it, so we will not be telling you that this asset sits in the top quarter of anything. That number does not honestly exist yet.
What we can tell you is where this company's speed goes, how we know it, and how sure we are of each part.
The instrument is new. What it measures is not. It comes out of The Stillness Dividend (2026) and a working paper published on SSRN, Protecting Organisational Judgement Under AI Acceleration, and out of two careers spent watching the distance between what was agreed in a room and what turned up in the quarter.
When it is not the right thing
On a very short fuse. If the exclusivity window is measured in days rather than weeks, a pre-deal read is not going to be worth what you pay for it. Say so and we will tell you the same.
When the thesis is the asset, not the execution. If the return comes from multiple arbitrage, a refinancing or a carve-out where the operating plan is somebody else's problem, this measures something you are not relying on.
When you already know. If the deal team has held this asset before, or has a clear read on the management team's ability to execute, you may not need the measurement. Go and act.
Investment
The pre-deal read starts at £15,000 and is scoped to the size of the company and the number of sites or divisions in play. Post-close work is scoped like any Baseline, to the size of the company and the number of leadership teams taking part.
The first conversation is where we work out whether this is worth doing at all, and it costs nothing.
The pace is an assumption. It can be measured.
Every model has a pace in it. Very few deals test whether the company can take it.
Common questions
How quickly can you start?
On a pre-deal read, within a week. Tell us the timetable on the first call and we will say honestly whether we can meet it.
Do you need management to co-operate?
Yes, for a session. A read built entirely from the data room is possible and is worth much less, and we would tell you so in the write-up rather than quietly.
Is this an engagement survey?
No. Engagement surveys ask people how they feel about working there. This measures how well the company turns decisions into delivered results.
Can we run it ourselves across the portfolio afterwards?
That is a legitimate outcome and the method is written to support it. Some clients take the measurement and run the improvement work with their own people.
Who created it?
Alice Phillips and Rob Anderson, authors of The Stillness Dividend. The ECI also appears in the SSRN working paper Protecting Organisational Judgement Under AI Acceleration.