I work for the company, with the fund's sponsorship. Diagnostic findings belong to the company; the fund sees themes and progress, not raw interviews. That boundary is agreed in writing before I start. Without it, founders don't talk honestly, and nothing else works.
For investors & boards
Earlier warning,
Earlier warning,
portfolio-wide.
By the time trouble shows in the board pack, the correction is expensive. I help portfolio companies build the focus and feedback loops that surface drift mid-quarter, while it's still cheap to fix.
Recently delivered as an expert-in-residence session for the founders and leadership of a UK private equity fund's portfolio.
The problem, in your terms
Board packs are rear-view mirrors
Revenue, retention and burn tell you what already happened. The signals that predict them live inside the company, usually unmeasured: pipeline coverage, win rates, delivery lead times, defect trends, priority churn.
A company reviewing a few leading indicators on a short cycle spots drift in weeks. The rest report it to you a quarter later.
The longer you stay off course, the larger the correction needed.
Engagement
Three ways to engage
40 min + Q&A · remote
The portfolio talk
"Organisational Scaling & Feedback Loops": why growing companies lose focus and responsiveness, and what the best operators have done about it for fifty years. Practical, framework-agnostic, no pitch. Delivered to your founders and their leadership teams.
Book a call to arrange this talk →
2 weeks per company · fixed fee
Portfolio execution review
The Execution Diagnostic, run across selected portfolio companies. Each company gets its findings and fix list in confidence; you get the cross-portfolio themes. Clear boundaries, agreed up front.
About the Diagnostic →
Retainer
Expert in residence
Office hours and on-call advisory across the portfolio: helping leadership teams instrument leading indicators, cut priority lists, and run a review cadence that surfaces problems early, so you hear about trouble from the founder rather than from the numbers.
Book a call →
Why this works
Most portfolio companies sit exactly in the window where this is still cheap to fix.
~10 people
Fast by default
Good habits cost almost nothing now and pay off for years.
Drag: negligible~50–150 people
The gains get eaten
Coordination overhead builds quietly. The sweet spot for intervention.
Drag: building250+ people
You pay to unpick it
What would have been habit-forming is now a transformation programme.
Drag: structural
Boundaries
How I handle the obvious tension
One talk is the cheapest experiment.
Forty minutes for your founders. If it lands, we talk about what's next; if it doesn't, it cost you a lunch slot.