Perspectives

Insights on PE Leadership

Practitioner perspectives on executive talent, value creation, and leadership in private equity-backed businesses.

Why Your Next CEO Hire Will Define the Entire Hold Period

No single decision shapes the outcome of a PE investment more than the choice of CEO. Yet most sponsors still treat the leadership question as secondary to the financial model, something to revisit once the deal is done.

March 2026·March 2026Read article →

Value Creation

The CTO as Value Creation Partner: What PE Firms Get Wrong

Too many sponsors hire for technical maintenance when they need a strategic technology operator. The CTO who can keep the lights on is not the same person who can drive product-led growth, lead a platform migration, or build the engineering culture required for a competitive exit.

February 2026Read →

Talent Strategy

Beyond the Adjective: Why PE Talent Doesn't Buy "Exceptional"

Most executive job descriptions are written for the wrong audience. They are crafted to satisfy internal stakeholders, to signal ambition, or to mirror the language of the last search brief someone kept on file. What they rarely do is speak to the candidate they are trying to attract.

April 2026Read →

Diligence

Human Capital Diligence: The Underused Edge in Deal Underwriting

Most PE firms assess management the same way they always have. A few reference calls. A leadership presentation. A gut feel built up over deal meetings. It is familiar, it is fast, and it consistently produces the same blind spot: the management team that performs well in a deal process is not always the team capable of executing the value creation plan that follows.

January 2026Read →

Market Trends

The Operating Partner Arms Race: What It Means for Portfolio Talent

As PE firms continue to build out their operating partner benches, the expectations placed on portfolio company executives are shifting in ways that are not yet fully understood.

December 2025Read →

Portfolio Operations

The 100-Day Plan and Its Talent Implications

The 100-day plan has become a standard feature of PE deal execution. But the talent implications of that plan — who needs to be in place, who needs to be developed, and who needs to be replaced — are rarely worked through with the same rigour as the operational priorities.

November 2025Read →

Leadership

Succession Planning in PE-Backed Businesses: A Practical Framework

Succession planning is often treated as a governance formality in PE-backed businesses. In practice, it is one of the most important risk management activities a sponsor can undertake — and one of the most frequently neglected.

October 2025Read →

Value Creation

Building Leadership Teams for Platform Acquisitions

Platform acquisitions create a specific and often underappreciated talent challenge. The leadership team that built the platform business is rarely the team that can execute a buy-and-build strategy at scale.

September 2025Read →

Leadership

What PE-Backed CEOs Need to Know About Exit Readiness

The CEO who leads a business through a successful PE hold is not necessarily the CEO who is best placed to lead the exit process. Understanding this distinction — and planning for it — is one of the most important conversations a sponsor can have with their portfolio leadership.

August 2025Read →