In Operational Restructuring the speed and quality of people decisions are critical.
We support private equity sponsors and private credit managers in critical portco talent decisions using an Operational Restructuring Talent Playbook. Watchlist due diligence and 30-day triage, is undertaken through five lenses to produce an integrated Talent Action Plan for investment committee sign off.
For private equity sponsors, private credit lenders, special situations investors and the boards of their portfolio companies.
Designed for investors who have to make fast people decisons
Private equity sponsors
Underperforming assets where the investment thesis is off track and the leadership team needs an objective, evidence-based reassessment.
Private credit lenders
Watch-list monitoring, take-the-keys events and lender-led operational restructuring, where you become the owner and need a credible view of leadership quickly.
Boards and ExCos
Chairs and ExCos who need to align around a revised value creation plan and show their owners that the plan is in the right hands.
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1
Watch list
A structured read on C-suite quality, an interim bench mapped by sector and assessments staged for rapid deployment.
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2
Financial restructuring
An early view of key-person, retention and leadership risk while the sponsor remains in control.
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3
Change of control
Day 1 stabilisation: chair, CEO and CFO continuity, and retention of critical roles.
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4
Operational restructuring
The 30-day triage, then replace, develop and hold to account across the hold.
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5
Exit
A management team and people function ready for buyer scrutiny, in advance of an exit.
Where the 30-day triage runs
Leadership is a key variable you can control
By the time a business is restructured, most financial levers have been pulled. What remains in the owner's hands is who leads the business, how it is organised and whether the leadership team can deliver the revised plan. In a recovery, the effect of management quality is amplified.
Speed sets the trajectory
Assessment and replacement decisions taken in the first month after a change of control shape everything that follows. Decisions deferred tend to become decisions avoided and could prove terminal.
Delay is expensive
An unaddressed wrong-fit CEO, absent CFO and uninspired CCO, can add many months to the hold period and weigh heavily on the recovery multiple.
Buyers price it at exit
Management quality and Human Resource governance are scrutinised in due diligence. The talent story has to be built long before the sale process begins.
The Talent Playbook: five lenses, one integrated view
People often assess individuals in isolation. The Talent Playbook triangulates five lenses into a single view, so that no one data source drives a decision.
Organisation design
Is the organisation configured to deliver the strategy?
The operating model against the twelve elements of McKinsey's Organize to Value system; alignment from purpose through strategy, capability, architecture and management systems; and the roles and competencies the recovery plan requires.
Operating-model refinements or a fuller redesign, with structure and roles confirmed before people are matched to them.
Individual leaders
Is each leader right for the seats the plan now requires?
Capability, fit and risk for every C-suite and critical, value creating, member of the extended senior leadership team: validated psychometrics covering potential, competencies, motivators, derailers, core strengths and critical reasoning, combined with structured competency interviews, 360 stakeholder input and actual performance evidence.
Retain and stretch, develop, redeploy or managed exit, with a development plan for every leader retained.
Systemic team coaching
Is this a leadership team, or a team of leaders?
The quality of connections within and between the board, ExCo and extended senior leadership team, and with external stakeholders, measured against the five disciplines of high-value-creating teams: commissioning, clarifying, co-creating, connecting and core learning.
A team health baseline and agreed coaching priorities, re-measured at six to twelve months.
People function
Can the People Function support the recovery plan?
Current against aspirational maturity across 24 people processes in six areas (organisational development, resourcing, engagement, reward, people development and people processes), weighted by how critical each is to the strategy.
A priority sequenced investment roadmap for the People Function.
Culture
Will the culture enable the change, or block it?
Cultural enablers and blockers across the seven pillars of a positive culture (purpose, perspective, control, connection, growth, coping and wellbeing), read separately for the board, senior leadership and the wider workforce.
A cultural baseline and a targeted programme, tracked through behavioural pulsing.
The order matters. We discuss the organisation design first to confirm the business is clear on structure, alignment, and value creating roles. We then match people to those roles, and close the team, function and culture gaps. All five lenses are run and reviewed as one programme, not five projects.
From watch list to a signed-off plan in 30 days
The triage is fastest when it is prepared before it is needed. Each stage has a defined purpose and a defined output.
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Before Day 1
Monitor
A structured read on C-suite quality from lender and board-observer interactions and public data. Interim CEO, CFO, CRO and Chair candidates pre-qualified. Psychometrics loaded for Day 1.
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Day 1–7
Stabilise
Chair, CEO and CFO continuity decisions. Retention conversations for critical roles. Clear communication to employees, customers, suppliers and other key stakeholders. Reporting cadence agreed with the owner.
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Day 7–30
Assess
Full C-suite assessment, an audit of direct reports and critical roles, an initial read on the Board, and the Executive team, function, design and culture diagnostics, all run in parallel.
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Day 30
Decide
Keep, develop or replace decisons for every C-suite seat and other critical roles, with succession contingencies and Board refresh where needed.
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Across the hold
Sustain
Coaching and development of individual leaders, systemic team coaching, people-function investment, the culture programme and regular performance reviews through to exit.
The output is one Talent Action Plan
Integrated with the revised value creation plan, signed off by the owner before structural people decisions are executed, and carrying named accountabilities for every C-suite and critical-role.
Three workstreams, through to exit
After Day 30, the Talent Action Plan runs as three parallel workstreams, each aimed at an exit at or above par.
Replace
where required
- Interim executives deployed from a pre-mapped bench, typically within two weeks
- Permanent C-suite search launched within 30 days
- Chair refresh and Board recomposition where governance is part of the problem
- Onboarding and team alignment for every new appointment
- Cross-portfolio moves where an executive is better deployed elsewhere
Develop
and accelerate performance
- An individual development plan for every retained executive
- Executive coaching from a vetted panel briefed on the value creation plan
- Systemic team-of-teams coaching around the revised plan
- Leadership development for high-potential direct reports and critical-role holders
- Mentoring for first-time CEOs and CFOs
Hold to account
against the value creation plan
- Monthly CEO and CFO reviews during the restructuring, quarterly thereafter
- A portfolio-level performance dashboard for the owner
- A staged intervention protocol: structured support, formal remediation, transition
- Annual Board effectiveness review, with escalation where board dynamics impede recovery
- Attrition and absence tracked as leading indicators of organisational health
What you receive
Every lens produces a defined output. Together they form the evidence base for the Day-30 decision.
- Leader profiles An integrated profile for each leader assessed, covering potential, competencies, motivators, derailers and core strengths, with a recommended action and a development plan for those retained.
- Design view Where the operating model and organisation design are misaligned with strategy, and the redesign choices available.
- Team baseline Team health across the five disciplines, with development priorities agreed by the team itself.
- Function roadmap A people-function gap analysis, weighted by criticality, and a sequenced investment roadmap.
- Culture baseline A seven-pillar baseline, a targeted culture programme and a pulsing plan to track change.
- Talent Action Plan One prioritised synthesis of all five lenses, integrated with the value creation plan, with named owners for every critical element.
How we work
Evidence, not impression
Psychometric data informs people decisions but never determines them on its own. Every recommendation is triangulated with performance evidence and business need.
Design before people
We confirm which roles the recovery needs before we recommend who should sit in them.
One programme
Five lenses, reviewed together and sequenced as a single restructuring programme with one owner.
Fair and compliant
Every leader assessed receives a confidential one-to-one debrief. Decisions follow a documented, fair and legally compliant process.
Development and accountability are distinct
We support leaders to succeed, while also holding them to account against the plan.
Service, with a mandate to escalate
We work alongside management and other operational restructuring advisors, and escalate decisively when the recovery is at risk.
What the triage asks of your team
The triage is designed to fit around leaders who are already running a business under pressure.
Each leader assessed
Around two hours of online assessment, a structured interview and a confidential one-to-one debrief.
Leadership team
A 20-minute team questionnaire, a facilitated workshop and working sessions on the operating model and culture.
People function
A 20-minute maturity assessment, completed by the People function and its key internal customers.
The owner
Access to leaders, sponsorship of the Day-30 decision meeting and signing-off the Talent Action Plan.
Instruments and frameworks we draw on include Perspectives™ (Peoplewise, part of the LCAP Group), SDI 2.0 (Core Strengths), Watson-Glaser and SHL Verify G+ reasoning assessments, the High Value Creating Team Questionnaire (© Renewal Associates), McKinsey's Organize to Value operating model, Jonathan Trevor's enterprise value chain and Peoplewise's seven pillars of a positive culture. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Facing a deteriorating watchlist or immediate operational restructuring situation?
Talk to us before it gets critical. The triage is most effective when the interim bench and the assessment plan are already in place.