A recent Harvard Business Review article posed an uncomfortable challenge to leaders of publicly quoted companies: if you want to compete with the value-creation capabilities of private equity, you need to run the business with the same speed, discipline and focus. The article highlights six of the most successful tactics PE firms apply to create value that could be adapted for corporates.
It is easy to see why the argument resonates. Many listed businesses look at the performance gains achieved in private equity-backed environments with a mixture of admiration and envy. In the best PE-backed businesses, the pace is often faster, and value creation is built into everyday decision-making.
However, translating that model into a corporate setting is not straightforward. For CEOs and People Directors of listed businesses, the most pressing challenge is a human one. Where do you find people who think this way? How do you attract them into a corporate environment? And, just as importantly, how do you create a culture that allows them to flourish rather than wearing them down?
At its core, the PE mindset is a bias towards performance, accountability and decisive action. These leaders behave as though their own capital were at stake, are comfortable acting with incomplete information, and quickly challenge activity that does not create value. Some of that mindset is structural rather than purely psychological: PE managers typically hold real equity and work to a fixed hold period that creates urgency. But the behaviours it produces can still be hired for and built into how a large corporate operates.
What to look for…
Four traits tend to separate this type of leader from the rest.
- Ownership orientation. They look beyond their function and immediate remit, think about the whole business, and describe their contribution in outcomes rather than activity
- Commercial curiosity. They understand value drivers, margins and the P&L, regardless of whether they work in operations, marketing, finance or people
- Comfort with constraint. PE environments demand sharp prioritisation and disciplined resource allocation. Strong candidates think clearly under pressure rather than asking for more time or more headcount
- Constructive challenge. They identify what is not working and push for change, but without destabilising the team around them
There are many ways to test for these traits in an interview. Asking candidates to describe a time when they challenged something that was not working, or how they would approach a decision if the business were their own, tends to reveal both their thinking and their confidence to act on it. Candidates with a genuine PE mindset generally describe their experience in terms of outcomes rather than process.
Where to find them…
The obvious talent pool is executives currently working in PE portfolio companies. But these individuals are often expensive, tied to equity cycles, and reluctant to return to a large corporate.
Some of the strongest candidates are already working in other listed or privately owned groups. Indeed, many of the most successful European PE-backed growth stories have been led by executives who joined from corporates. Austin Lally joined Verisure after 26 years at Procter & Gamble. Frank Vrancken Peeters, CEO of Springer Nature since 2019, developed much of his career in large, complex international businesses. Tomasz Suchański moved to Żabka after holding senior roles at Jerónimo Martins, one of Europe’s largest publicly listed food retailers.
Internal talent should not be overlooked either. Hajir Hajji, now CEO of Action, began on the shop floor and developed within the business prior to 3i’s acquisition. Her progression shows that commercially instinctive, high-ownership leaders are not always external hires; sometimes, they simply need greater authority and room to operate.
Within large organisations, these individuals often stand out. They are inclined to challenge the status quo and can become frustrated by slow or overly cautious decision-making. Hiring managers may mistake this edge for poor stakeholder management; the real task is to distinguish destructive impatience from positive disruption and create an environment in which the latter can generate value.
Building the right conditions…
Bringing in people with a PE mindset only creates value if the culture around them lets that mindset operate. Excessive consensus-building or an unwillingness to confront underperformance will hold back even the best hire. That means resisting the temptation to treat this as a single transformational hire.
Cultures shift when there is a critical mass of people who are holding the business to higher standards, which makes this a sustained talent strategy rather than a one-off appointment: repeated across functions, reinforced through assessment and succession planning, and visibly sponsored by leadership.
PE outperforms because it creates conditions in which ownership-oriented people can move quickly and stay focused on value. Corporates will not replicate every one of those conditions, but the people side of the equation is transferable, and corporates have the opportunity to look at ownership as a leadership capability rather than purely an incentive mechanism.
