The engagement
An operating partner who can also take the seat
A private equity owner rarely needs another adviser. What the situation calls for is an operator who can read an industrial business honestly, make the value-creation plan real in the months after closing, and step into the operation itself when that is what it takes.
The model is priced on paper. It is proven on the floor
Deal teams are rarely wrong about the market. Where the case usually slips is the operation underneath it: whether the plant can hold the volume, whether the management team is the one that gets you there, and whether the improvement in the model has any owner on a Monday morning.
That is the gap an independent operating partner fills. Not a second opinion on the thesis, and not a report from the sidelines, but an operator’s read on the asset itself — delivered by someone who has owned a full P&L in industry and answered to a board for the result. The judgement comes from having run the operation, which is a different thing from having reviewed one.
The mandate scales with what the situation needs. Sometimes it is a few days before a deal. Sometimes it is periodic presence through the first year of ownership. Sometimes it becomes the seat itself.
What I own
- The honest operational read on the asset, before the deal or straight after it
- A value-creation plan tested against what the operation can actually deliver
- The first hundred days: governance, cadence and the few things that must move first
- A straight view on whether the management team is the one for the plan
- Margin work where it lives: takt, flow, supply chain, quality and cost
- The interim seat itself, if the operation needs one filled
Behind the read sits an operating record: a full P&L owned for a manufacturing and distribution business, delivery lifted from 90% to over 97% and held for years, productivity to a corporate minimum of +7% per year, and a cross-European transfer into five receiving factories in four countries with customer deliveries protected throughout.
The method
How an operating-partner mandate runs
The scope varies with the asset. The sequence does not, and each step ends on something you can check rather than a feeling that progress was made.
Read the asset
Operational due diligence run the way an operator runs it: time on the floor, the real state of delivery, cost, quality, maintenance and governance, and an honest view of the leadership capacity behind the numbers. Whether it happens before signing or the week after closing, the read is the same.
Done when you have a written operational picture you can price against, including the parts of the case that will not hold.
Test the value-creation plan
Every improvement in the model gets traced to something physical: a line, a shift pattern, a supplier, a role. What survives becomes the plan. What does not gets replaced with something the operation can actually deliver, before anyone commits to a number in a board pack.
Done when each value driver has an owner, a mechanism and a date, and the board has seen which assumptions changed.
Make the first hundred days real
The window that decides everything. Daily management and escalation put in place, the two or three constraints that gate the whole plan attacked first, and a reporting rhythm the fund and the company read the same way. Momentum here is worth more than completeness.
Done when the operation is running on its own cadence and the first movements show in the company’s numbers, not only in the plan.
Judge the team and the structure
The hardest conversation in any ownership cycle, and the one that gets postponed. Which leaders grow into the plan, where the structure is wrong rather than the people, and what has to change for the organisation to carry the result without outside help. Said plainly, to the owner and to the person concerned.
Done when the owner has an unfiltered view of the leadership capacity, and the changes that follow have been made rather than discussed.
Step in, or step back
If the gap turns out to be execution rather than judgement, I take the seat on an interim basis and own the result myself — general manager, site MD, COO or operations director. If the organisation can carry it, the right move is to withdraw to periodic presence and let them run. Both outcomes are wins; only one of them gets sold to you by most advisers.
Done when the operation holds its numbers with the organisation that will still be there after I leave.
Through every step, one commitment: you get the operational truth as I see it, including the parts that make the investment case harder. That is the only version worth paying for.
When it matters most
The months that decide whether the thesis was right
The first hundred days after closing decide whether a value-creation plan becomes the way the business is run or stays a document. Everything before that is preparation; everything after is consequence.
An industrial asset rarely disappoints because the market moved. It disappoints because delivery slipped, a ramp-up stalled, a footprint decision was postponed, or a management team was left in place a year too long. Those are operating problems, and they are answered on the floor by someone who has answered them before.
Typical situations
- An industrial asset under review, where the operational case needs an operator’s eye
- A newly acquired company where the plan has to start moving now
- A holding that is behind its case and nobody can say precisely why
- A sudden gap in the operational leadership of a portfolio company
- Exit preparation, where the operation has to stand on its own without any one person
On the leadership question specifically: I have recruited 60+ specialists mid-ramp for a scale-up in a tight labour market, and built the case for a site consolidation and presented it to the board that took the decision — as a sitting member of that board.Certified board member, Styrelseakademien. Four years in an industrial boardroom through heavy transformation.
Common questions
The operating-partner role, answered
What does an operating partner do that our own team cannot?
Your team knows the model. What is harder to source internally is someone who has carried a full P&L in an industrial business and can therefore tell you, quickly and without a stake in the answer, whether the plan you priced is achievable with the operation and the people you actually bought. Deal teams read numbers; the operating partner reads the factory those numbers come from, and says which parts of the case are real, which are optimistic, and what it will take to close the gap.
Which side of the table have you actually sat on?
The operator’s side and the board’s side. I have owned a full P&L for a manufacturing and distribution operation serving the Nordic market, sat on that company’s board for four years through heavy transformation, and built and presented the business case for a site consolidation to the board that took the decision. I am a certified board member through Styrelseakademien. That combination is the point: strategy discussed in the boardroom and execution owned on the floor are usually two different people, and here they are the same one.
One asset, or across the portfolio?
Both shapes work. A single mandate is straightforward: one company, one situation, a defined scope. A portfolio relationship is different in rhythm rather than in kind — periodic access to the same operator across several holdings, so the read on the third asset is faster than the read on the first, and the operating model that worked in one company can be carried into the next. The engagement form follows the shape: a defined mandate for one asset, or a retained arrangement where capacity is reserved and drawn down as the portfolio needs it.
Would you take the CEO or COO seat in a portfolio company?
Yes, and that is often the most useful thing about the arrangement. An operating partner who can only advise has to hand the hard part to someone else. I can read the operation from outside, and if the conclusion is that the seat itself needs filling — general manager, site MD, COO or operations director — I can take it on an interim basis and own the result, then hand back a stronger organisation. The escalation happens without changing person, so nothing is lost in the handover.
How is an operating-partner engagement priced?
It follows the shape of the work rather than a fixed price list. A defined piece — operational due diligence, a plan review, a focused improvement mandate — is priced on scope. A portfolio relationship is usually a retainer that reserves capacity and gives priority access, with operational days invoiced as they are used. An interim seat is contracted separately, monthly or daily depending on scope. All of it runs through my company, LeadOps Sweden Advisory AB, or through the interim provider you already work with. We settle the numbers once the scope is clear, not before.
Related situations: Post-acquisition integration · Production turnaround · Interim COOAll services · About Soheil
Let’s talk
Looking at an industrial asset?
Whether it is a company you are considering, one you have just bought, or a holding that is behind its case — a short conversation is usually enough to tell whether an operator’s read would help. Fifteen minutes, no preparation needed.
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