In November of my Freshman year in college, my father gave me some good career advice. At the time, I quickly found myself in the process of washing out of a pre-med curriculum for reasons that, looking back, should have been entirely obvious: doctors who pass out when their blood gets drawn don’t set a […]

Mr. Boyce retired from the partnership at TPG Capital, one of the largest global investment partnerships, owning 107 companies with over $140 Billion in revenue.  He founded and led TPG’s Operating Group, which drives performance improvement across all the TPG companies, from 1997 to 2013.  In his first role, he served as the Chief Executive […]

What makes some clients more successful than others? Operating Partner searches are unique animals when compared to other recruiting assignments that we undertake. Because of the nature of both the role and the client, there’s very little about them that is straightforward. By comparison, everyone knows what a CFO does… the role is clear. There’s […]

One of the more prevalent developments within Portfolio Operations teams has been the creation of the Human Capital Partner. As money and debt become more of a commodity, and transformation expertise is more regularly and uniformly deployed, one of the remaining levers ripe for differentiation centers around Human Capital. The prosperity of a PE firm […]

“Sometimes I blow things up to be way more impressive than they actually are. The struggle is real.” These were the verbatim comments I recently heard from my college age niece as she was reviewing life after her highly anticipated 21st birthday. (Full disclosure: I had to look up “struggle is real” in the Urban […]

When I started writing this blog I wanted it to be a destination for both sitting and prospective Operating Partners. It occurred to me that many times an exec becomes an Operating Partner because they’ve had experience with a PE firm via deal due diligence. It dawned on me that there’s a greater majority of […]

It seems to me that a company’s organizational structure is always being pressure tested for how it responds to the realities of a changing market. So many times we see large corporations undergo significant structural overhauls. One day they are organized in distinct business units where the GMs run the show with a good degree […]

“Make Private Equity Great Again.”  Can the Operating Partner role “Make Private Equity Great Again?” Maybe we could print up some hats!  Seriously though, borrowing the phrase in a playful manner and applying it to Private Equity got me thinking a bit. Can Operating Partners play a role in humanizing our industry? Certainly, the PE […]

Earlier this month I had the great fortune to attend The Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. For those of you lucky enough to have experienced it for yourselves, you already understand how special the event is. For those that haven’t, it is as close to perfection in a golf […]

In 2006 when I ran my very first Operating Partner search the environment around the role was markedly different from what we see today.  Back then, even getting a successful executive to consider taking such a role inside a “corporate raider” was a tall order. Many times when I called a CEO about an Operating Partner […]