The Private Equity CEO Playbook

Best Practice Lessons from 350 CEOs

The Private Equity CEO Playbook is a guide to success on the value creation journey. The Playbook is based on in-depth interviews with 350 CEOs of portfolio companies, representing +1,000 years of hands-on experience working with active owners. To our knowledge, this represents the largest study of its kind in the world to date.

A Guide to Success on the Value Creation Journey

Download The Private Equity CEO Playbook

The Private Equity CEO Playbook is a guide to success on the value creation journey that management teams of portfolio companies undertake alongside their active owners. By systematically applying the best practice lessons shared by the portfolio company CEOs in the Playbook, management teams and owner representatives can significantly enhance their chances of succeeding with their value creation ambitions.

  • Pages
    560
  • Chapters
    18
  • CEO Interviews
    350
Highlights in 5 Charts

Introducing the Key Success Themes

  • Five Key Success Themes

    The 350 portfolio company CEOs that were interviewed highlight five key success themes where Champion League-level performance is critical for achieving successful implementation of the value creation ambitions.

  • 83% of Top Quartile CEOs Succeed

    83% of the CEOs in the top quartile, based on the performance of the key success themes identified in The Private Equity CEO Playbook, report success with implementing the value creation plan.

  • Key Lessons for the Effective CEO

    The Wheel of Success for Effective CEO Leadership according to the 350 interviewed CEOs.

  • Benchmarking 23 Active Owners

    There is a clear relationship between the performance of the key success themes and the ultimate implementation success of the value creation plans across the portfolios of 23 active owners.

  • Two Key Processes

    Success of the Value Creation Plan depends on mastering the critical people-related process steps in parallel with a robust analytical workflow.

Have a Glance

Read from Chapter Two

About the Playbook

Guidance to Success in the CEO Role

There is little specific guidance in print about the portfolio company CEO role. The Private Equity CEO Playbook aims to bridge this gap and provide concrete guidance on achieving success.

By systematically applying the best practice lessons shared by portfolio company CEOs in the Playbook, management teams and owner representatives can significantly enhance their chances of realizing their value creation ambitions.

The Private Equity CEO Playbook is based on in-depth interviews with 350 current and former CEOs of portfolio companies representing over 1,000 years of hands-on experience working with active owners. To our knowledge, this represents the largest study of its kind in the world to date.

Evaluation Tool

Evaluate and Compare Your Performance

The evaluation tool is a short 15-minute survey that provides a self-assessed view of your performance on the key success themes described in the Playbook. You will receive a benchmark comparison report between your results and that of the 350 CEOs in the reference group.

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About the Author

Alexander Asplund

Alexander is the founder of Accance Business Advisory. With a 30-year career in strategic and operational consulting, Alexander has specialized in accelerating value creation in the private equity context since 2005.

He has supported management teams in 50 private equity-owned portfolio companies in developing and implementing ambitious value creation programs and initiatives.

Alexander has also managed 100+ investment analysis projects for 25+ leading private equity firms in the Nordics. He holds an MBA from The Wharton School and an MSc from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

alexander.asplund@accance.se

+46-768 882 110

A Must-Read Playbook for CEOs and Active Owners

Best Practice Lessons for the Value Creation Journey

Guidance about the portfolio-company CEO role is scarce. The Private Equity CEO Playbook aims to bridge this gap and provide concrete guidance on achieving success.

About Accance

We Support Your Value Creation Journey

  • We support management teams on their value creation journey with key services, including:

    • Market, Customer & Business Analysis
    • Growth Strategy & Value Creation Plans
    • Margin Expansion & Operational Excellence
    • Transformation, Vitalization & Implementation Support
    • Benchmarking & Best Practice Exchange Programs
    • Governance & Performance Management
  • Accance assists private equity investors with key services such as:

    • Commercial Due Diligence Analysis
    • Value Creation Strategy & Plans
    • Program Management Office and 100-Day Programs
    • Exit Preparation
  • We offer services to leverage the best practice lessons outlined in the Playbook:

    • Measure: Performance Measurement & Assessment
    • Benchmark: Peer Group & Best Practice Benchmarking
    • Diagnose: Diagnosis & Gap Analysis
    • Improve: Improvement Strategies & Implementation Support

Accelerated value creation is at the core of everything we do. Accance Business Advisory supports management teams with developing and implementing ambitious revenue growth and margin expansion initiatives with the aim of doubling or tripling EBIT over 3-5 years. 

 

Team

Alexander Asplund leads the Accance team, and he has 30 years of experience from strategic and operational excellence consulting having previously worked with Boston Consulting Group, Celerant Consulting and as co-founder of Vadestra Strategy.

The team consists of 10 project analysts and an international network of highly experienced former BCG, McKinsey, A.T. Kearney, Roland Berger business analysts & consultants, covering over 20 countries and 8 different languages.

 

Approach

Focus on value creation: The potential for accelerated value creation, via revenue growth, profit expansion and effective implementation is in focus in all assignments. Our team validates the potential and develops actionable strategies & pragmatic initiatives to capture the potentials.

Fact-based analysis: Accance work with a hypothesis driven approach and fact-based analysis. To understand a market and test our hypotheses, our team will typically interview 20-50 customers and a substantial number of value chain players to understand the market, the customers and the opportunities.

End-to-end support: We provide effective support where it adds most value to our client. The support may be centered on analysis and understanding; or on developing strategies and concrete initiatives; or on supporting and accelerating the implementation effort.

Small, experienced & flexible teams: We bring small and experienced teams to our assignments. We are flexible and work on both short-term and narrow-scope analysis projects and on long-term & larger scale implementation projects.

Close co-operation: We always work closely together with the client organization to leverage internal knowledge, develop shared insights and to secure a strong commitment to key decisions and actionable priorities.