Private Equity - Family Office - Strategic Acquirers
The Deal Was Built to Perform. So Why Isn’t It?
Most acquisition teams are exceptionally good at the financial and strategic case for a deal. What happens after the close is a different discipline entirely — and it's where the gap between projected returns and realized returns almost always opens up.
We work with PE firms, family offices, and strategic acquirers who have acquired one or more manufacturing and industrial businesses and need someone to come in, assess what's actually in place, and build the operational foundation that makes the portfolio perform.
The Gap
The Financial Close Is The Beginning, Not The End
Most acquisition groups do exceptional work building the business and financial case for a deal. The operational transition is a different problem — and one that most acquisition teams are not structured to solve. Once the deal closes, an operator goes in the seat and the portfolio company is largely left to run itself. That works when the right foundation is in place. It rarely is.
What we see consistently across portfolio companies: some businesses are performing and some aren't, and no one has a clear read on why. The assumption is usually that it comes down to the operator. In practice, it almost always comes back to two things — whether the leadership team has the fundamental tools and capability to actually run the business, and whether there is a coherent strategy connecting each business to the portfolio's overall goals. Neither of those things gets solved by swapping the operator.
Where the Gap Lives
Two problem. Almost every portfolio has both.
The leadership team. Almost every portfolio has both.
The operator walks in and finds a team that is technically capable but missing the fundamental infrastructure to function without constant direction — no shared operating picture, no accountability structure, no management cadence, no data discipline. The business runs on instinct and relationships. That works until the founder leaves. Then it doesn't.
Each company is doing its own thing.
In a multi-company portfolio, there is no shared operating standard. Each business has its own processes, its own reporting, its own way of doing things. There is no common language, no visibility across the portfolio, and no mechanism for the businesses to work toward a shared goal. The portfolio looks like a collection of bets, not a platform.
No one has actually looked.
The most common reason performance gaps go unresolved is that no one has done a structured, ground-level assessment of what each business actually has in place versus what it needs. Not a financial audit — an operational one. What the leadership team can actually do. What systems exist and which ones work. Where the real constraints are. You cannot build a plan on assumptions.
The Work
We work alongside acquisition teams and portfolio leadership to do what the deal process rarely has time for: a structured, ground-level assessment of each portfolio company — what operational foundation is in place, what leadership capability actually exists, where the real constraints are, and how each business connects to the portfolio's overall strategy. That assessment produces a prioritized plan, not a generic recommendation. Every action is tied to a specific operational or financial outcome.
Depending on what the situation requires, we either deliver the plan and support the internal team in executing it, or we stay embedded until the performance is where it needs to be. The engagement is shaped by what the portfolio actually needs — not by a predefined service package.
Most PE firms are not operators. We are. Thirty years in manufacturing and industrial businesses, from the shop floor to the C-suite. We know what good looks like at every level — and we know how to close the gap between where a portfolio company is and where the deal thesis said it would be.
Proof Numbers
12+
Portfolio and operating companies assessed
30+
Years manufacturing & industrial operations
Quote
"The Work Before the Work is a leadership fable for owners and their teams who have tried the frameworks, followed the playbooks, and still feel like they're pushing a truck uphill. It's the story of what happens when someone finally stops asking 'what system should we run?' and starts asking whether the company has actually built the foundation."
— From the back cover
The Framework Behind the Story
The VITAL model in the book is the same model we use in practice.
Cole doesn't arrive at Harlan Precision with a framework in his briefcase. He builds it — through observation, conversation, and the discipline of naming what he sees before he acts on it. Vision. Intelligence. Team. Accountability. Leverage.
That is exactly how the VITAL Strategic Assessment™ is applied in our client work. We don't install it on top of an organization. We use it to diagnose what the organization has actually built — and what it is missing.
If you read the book and recognize your company in it, a VITAL Assessment is the next logical step.
The Framework Behind the Story
Ready to stop pushing the truck uphill?
The book names the problem. The VITAL Assessment shows you where it lives in your business.