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When leaders ask if it’s the right time to hire an external consultant, they are rarely looking for a technical checklist. When it IS time, the word I hear most as to why, is “shit-show.” Sometimes that shitshow is happening between team members. Sometimes it’s happening between the ears of the executive. And other times, it’s the byproduct of corporate upheaval. But the real answer to the timing question is simple. There is no universally right or wrong time to bring in hel

Preparing your leadership team for PE ownership is not an operational capacity problem. It is a psychological alignment problem. The greatest roadblock to success under a PE model is not a lack of hours in the day; it is the emotional friction of letting go. The Liberating Force of Fresh Eyes When a Private Equity firm acquires a business, they bring in fresh eyes in the form of an Operating Partner and a new board. These people immediately start asking questions about the un

The First 100 Days For a PortCo CEO in Private Equity Can Be Terribly Emotional. Most PortCo CEOs expect a mountain of new targets, a relentless reporting cadence, and an immediate pressure to perform. What they do not expect is the intense internal pressure that can derail execution before the first quarter KPIs are even measured. In any value creation plan, there are four hidden leadership levers that determine a PortCo CEOs success: capacity management self-advocacy intra

The traditional narrative around private equity acquisitions is predictable. A firm buys an asset, hands the CEO a strict Value Creation Plan, and the original corporate mission is promptly sacrificed at the altar of EBITDA. As a private equity leadership consultant who moves portfolio companies from stalled plans to scaled margins, I see this play out constantly. But the common assumption is wrong. The biggest threat to your company’s original mission is not the private equi

When an aggressive scale mandate stalls midway through a hold period, a Private Equity Operating Partner is immediately forced into a brutal, multi-million-dollar binary choice. Do I fire the CEO or try to fix them? ​ Executing a mid-hold replacement is an absolute nightmare. It destroys momentum, panics the management team, and forces the deal team to completely re-underwrite their valuation models. Replacing a CEO mid-hold routinely delays an exit timeline by 12 to 18 mont