Every engagement starts from the same question: can this leadership team, this board and this culture deliver the plan that was underwritten?
Leading a private equity-backed company can be an isolating job. The board is focused on results, the investors on pace, and the executive team is looking to you for direction it can rely on.
What the role rarely provides is a place to think: somewhere to test a judgement before it becomes a decision. That is what the coaching is for. I work one to one with chief executives on the first hundred days in a new role, a board relationship that has become difficult, a team inherited rather than chosen, or a business being prepared for exit.
The conversations are confidential and direct, and often a mix of coaching and advice drawn from my own time in the role.
Boards often sense that something is not working before they can say precisely what.
I carry out confidential evaluations of composition, dynamics and decision-making, looking at how well the board supports the investment thesis and where any distance has opened between governance and performance. Where relationships have become strained, I mediate between portfolio company leadership and sponsors to reset how the board works.
I then work with the board on what follows, if that would be useful.
Culture is difficult to discuss usefully without something to measure.
As an accredited Denison Consulting partner, I use a diagnostic that assesses mission, adaptability, involvement and consistency, benchmarked against a database of more than 1,100 organisations. It gives a board and a management team something specific to work from rather than a set of impressions.
Where change work follows, I can design and run it.
Some of this work happens during diligence, and some of it well before anything has been formally identified as a problem.
A CV records what someone has already done. It says less about whether they can do the next thing, in this particular business, under this board, on this timeline.
I combine structured behavioural interviewing with validated instruments, including the Hogan Assessment, to give a clear read on strengths, likely derailers and values. The assessment is set against the skills needed to deliver the portfolio company's specific investment thesis rather than a general competency model.
Used before a hire, before a replacement, and when deciding whether an incumbent stays.
The first 100 days tend to set the terms of everything after them, and new portfolio chief executives often spend them working out what the board actually wants.
I build tailored onboarding for incoming CEOs and C-suite leaders around the investment thesis, using the Center for Creative Leadership 360 suite to establish an honest baseline early, while feedback is still straightforward to act on.
A confidential evaluation of how the board actually works: its dynamics, its decision-making, and how much of its time goes to oversight rather than to the questions that decide the outcome.
Where relationships between sponsors and portfolio company leadership have become strained, I act as mediator. Having chaired PE boards and sat on them as a non-executive, I understand both sides of the table.
Cultural differences are usually visible during diligence and usually addressed after integration.
Using the Denison Culture Survey, I identify where two organisations are likely to work against each other, benchmark both against a global dataset, and set out an integration approach that names the specific points of friction rather than describing an ideal.
One to one, on the things that are difficult to raise elsewhere: managing investor relationships, working with a board that has changed its position, building a team you inherited, and keeping your judgement steady when a quarter goes against you.
This is a mix of coaching and advice, and I am open about that. My training is psychodynamic, so we work on what is actually driving decisions, not just on tactics. But I have held the role myself, and when my experience is relevant I will say what I would do and why. Purist coaching withholds that. I do not.
The work is confidential and shaped around the situation rather than a fixed curriculum. Some engagements run for a defined period, such as the first hundred days or the run-up to an exit. Others continue through a hold period, with a standing session and access in between when something cannot wait.
Selling a business and staying on to run it means holding two roles at once: delivering a plan set by others, and gradually letting go of something you built.
The mechanics change quickly. There is now a board with a majority owner on it, a reporting rhythm that did not exist before, an equity package with conditions attached, and a plan written by people who see the business as an investment. None of this is hostile, but all of it is new, and the adjustment is usually harder than either side expects.
I work with founders through that first period, as both coach and adviser. Some of it is helping you think; some of it is telling you how sponsors read what you are doing, because I have sat on their side of the table. The commercial side of the transition is usually well advised. The rest of it often is not.
A value creation plan that exists mainly in the fund's model is not yet a plan, it's a slide deck.
Most senior teams will nod a plan through in the room and then quietly run their functions as before. The disagreements that matter, about pace, priorities, and what gets stopped, tend to surface a year later as missed numbers rather than as arguments.
I run facilitated sessions with senior teams to get those disagreements on the table early: what the plan actually requires of each function, where the team does not yet believe it, and what has to change for the commitments to be real. I facilitate as someone who has run these plans, not as a neutral with a whiteboard, and I say so when a position the team is settling on will not survive contact with the sponsor.