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Lessons from Private Equity Any Company Can Use (Memo to the CEO) (Hardcover)

by Orit Gadiesh (Author), Hugh Macarthur (Author)
3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 126 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard Business School Press (1 May 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1422124959
  • ISBN-13: 978-1422124956
  • Product Dimensions: 18.5 x 11.9 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 156,573 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #16 in  Books > Business, Finance & Law > Professional Finance > Venture Capital
    #17 in  Books > Business, Finance & Law > Small Business & Entrepreneurship > Capital Generation

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Product Description

Product Description

Private equity firms are snapping up brand-name companies and assembling portfolios that make them immense global conglomerates. They're often able to maximize investor value far more successfully than traditional public companies.

How do PE firms become such powerhouses? Learn how, in Lessons from Private Equity Any Company Can Use. Bain chairman Orit Gadiesh and partner Hugh MacArthur use the concise, actionable format of a memo to lay out the five disciplines that PE firms use to attain their edge

This is your playbook for building the results-driven culture that will put your firm on par with PE.

From our new Memo to the CEO series-- solutions-focused advice from today's leading practitioners



From the Back Cover

Private equity firms are snapping up brand-name companies and assembling portfolios that make them immense global conglomerates. They're often able to maximize investor value far more successfully than traditional public companies.

How do PE firms become such powerhouses? Learn how, in Private Equity Lessons You Cannot Afford to Ignore. Bain chairman Orit Gadiesh and partner Hugh MacArthur use the concise, actionable format of a memo to lay out the five disciplines that PE firms use to attain their edge:

  • Invest with a thesis using a specific, appropriate 3-5-year goal
  • Create a blueprint for change--a road map for initiatives that will generate the most value for your company within that time frame
  • Measure only what matters--such as cash, key market intelligence, and critical operating data
  • Hire, motivate, and retain hungry managers--people who think like owners
  • Make equity sweat--by making cash scarce, and forcing managers to redeploy underperforming capital in productive directions

This is your playbook for building the results-driven culture that will put your firm on par with PE.

From our new Memo to the CEO series-- solutions-focused advice from today's leading practitioners.

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Customer Reviews

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Average Customer Review
3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Statement of the obvious, 18 Jul 2008
By C. Birch "Oxford" (Oxford) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This small book proports to tell people about the methods of private equity. Perhaps at a very high level it does, but at such a high level it is merely stating the obvious. Anyone sophisticated enough to be thinking of buying this book is, I think, unlikely to learn anything from it.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars How to make any business more valuable, 14 May 2008
By Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This is one of the titles in the "Memo to the CEO" series published by Harvard Business Press, each less than 200 pages in length and superbly produced. In fact, none of them is a "memo" nor were any of them written only for CEOs. In this volume, Orit Gadiesh and Hugh MacArthur explain how to make any business more valuable while acknowledging that the lessons to be learned from the private equity (PE) industry are not rigorously and consistently applied by businesses around the world. Why? "We see two main reasons for this: first, the application of these lessons drives real change in many businesses, and, for better or worse, change brings risks, both real and imagined...Second, many leaders apply the lessons that we will discuss, but incompletely. It is easier to do "fine" than to the "best" a company can do. We call this [begin italics] satisfactory underperformance [end italics] - a pervasive disease in business that is the direct target of this memo."

Gadiesh and MacArthur are eminently well-qualified to identify and then examine the tools and techniques used by the best PE firms. She is chairman of Bain & Company, the first management consulting firm to develop a global PE practice that is now the largest of its kind. MacArthur heads it. Moreover, even a cursory review of their respective careers suggests a scope and depth of real-world business experience in all areas of operations with global companies in a variety of industries. They speak with unique authority when asserting that the smartest PE investors "have realized that the only way to reliably increase the value of their portfolios is to maximize the operating value of the underlying businesses in them. For this reason, the best PE firms have shifted many of the resources that they once poured into financial engineering to ward creating value - and they are doing it in a way that is more systematic, focused, and aggressive than the practices in most companies."

It should be noted that the lessons they discuss and the recommendations they provide with those lessons can be of substantial value to decision-makers in any organization, whatever its size and nature may be. For example, "to improve profits and stock price [or value if the company is privately owned], you need to make strategic choices with a clear picture of the full potential of your company in mind." Define that potential by answering, with rigor and accuracy, this question: "How high is up?" Next, develop as "blueprint" or "road map" for getting to that full-potential destination. That is, the "who, what, when, where, and how" while establishing and then sustaining strategy, resources, execution, and measurement in proper alignment. The next objective is to accelerate performance at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise while harnessing the talent (i.e. hiring, "growing," and retaining only those who possess the talent, skills, experience, and character needed) because "the best-laid plans go nowhere without the right people to implement them."

Gadiesh and MacArthur also urge their reader "embrace LBO economics" which in part means getting comfortable with leverage. For
example, "eliminating unproductive or underperforming capital, often by cutting pieces out of the business. It also may mean finding new ways to convert traditionally fixed assets into sources of financing." A number of excellent books have been published in recent years in which their authors offer excellent advice on how an organization can become more agile. (Two of the best are Fast Strategy: How Strategic Agility Will Help You Stay Ahead of the Game and Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World co-authored by Charles Grantham, Jim Ware, and Cory Williamson.) Meanwhile, the best PE firms "work their magic" by helping C-level executives in their portfolio companies foster a results-oriented mindset that ensures results-driven performance.

By devoting a separate chapter to each of these six core principles, Gadiesh and MacArthur are able examine all of them in much greater depth. "We use the best private equity practices as the benchmark, but in reality [lessons to be learned from them] have been around for a long time. They just haven't been codified as formally by most businesses. Whatever the ownership of your company, our advice is to look at how the best PE people operate, and to use their techniques to compete against them and everyone else."

None of the lessons to be learned from private equity that Gadiesh and MacArthur have identified is a head-snapper, nor do they make any such claim. Ultimately," winners" and "losers" will be determined by the results their people produce. However, it is at least as important (if not more important) for decision-makers to understand what not to do as it is to understand what must be done and how to do that. In 1963, Peter Drucker spoke to this point: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."

Frankly, I am surprised that so much valuable information and (especially) advice can be presented, and presented so well, within a narrative only 122 pages in length. Orit Gadiesh and Hugh MacArthur are to be commended on their brilliant achievement.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out the aforementioned Fast Strategy and Corporate Agility as well as Roger Martin's The Opposable Mind, Gary Hamel's The Future of Management, Henry Chesbrough's Open Business Models, Richard Ogle's Smart World, Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect, James Kilts's Doing What Matters, Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement, and Enterprise Architecture As Strategy co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful look at private equity strategies, 9 Oct 2008
By Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract.com" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
CEOs of large public and private companies may not think they have much in common with private equity (PE) investors. After all, CEOs are beholden to their shareholders and boards. Their organizations have multiple layers of management and a conservative mindset that can make change ponderous. Meanwhile, PE investors thrive in a more free-wheeling environment, sizing up their targets and sometimes taking considerable risks in hopes of delivering exceptional financial results. Authors Orit Gadiesh and Hugh MacArthur believe that traditional companies can apply six successful principles from the PE firms' playbook. While adopting the PE philosophy isn't always easy, as the authors are quick to point out, the benefits can be significant. If you feel your company is not living up to its potential, then getAbstract believes this book points out some options you might want to consider. However, you might find that the idea inspires you more than the advice the authors bequeath.
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