Not the industry’s. Yours. The rate is not bad luck and it is not a talent shortage; it is the predictable output of a toolkit that cannot tell a people problem from a system problem. We build and run the instruments that can, from the diligence window through the hold.
Running a company rather than backing them? The company side is here.
Four offerings, in the order funds actually buy them. Each stands alone; each makes the next sharper, because the benchmarks compound inside your portfolio rather than walking out the door with a vendor.
The management team scored against the specific investment thesis, delivered deal-team-legible, inside your diligence window. Intrinsics, outcome metrics by function, and how work flows through each leader’s organization, compressed to the question the IC actually has: can this team carry this plan? Run on four acquisitions to date. The consistent lesson: teams look different scored against the actual plan than scored against “good executive.” Fixed fee per deal, priced per executive assessed, quoted inside your diligence window.
The Strategy Alignment Audit run 60 to 90 days post-close, while drift is cheapest to fix and the 100-day plan is still soft. Five-dimension pulse, a system map of the likely constraint, drift costed monthly, a 30/60/90 roadmap. The same instrument a CEO can commission alone; run fund-side, every participant is told so on day zero, and the readout lands beside the value-creation plan. Same fixed-fee structure as the company-side audit; portfolio pricing when it runs across holdings.
The same audit run comparably across holdings, one page per company: the likely constraint, what it costs monthly, the trend since the last read. Comparability is the product. It is how a lean portfolio talent function covers the whole book without adding headcount, and how the fund gets a leading indicator its operating reviews currently lack: work drifting from thesis, visible while course correction is still cheap. Scoped to the portfolio, priced per company.
For funds that want the system without renting it deal by deal: we stand up TL Partners’ instruments inside your fund, the diligence framework, the 100-day talent plan, executive scoring and density tracking, the operating cadence, each built fresh against your theses and calibrated to your benchmarks, and hand your team the keys. Two shapes: a build-and-transfer engagement, or a fractional portfolio talent partner retainer, one to two days a week across the portfolio, running diligence, plans, and searches while the system stands up. The system is built to outlive the engagement, including the ending where you hire the seat in-house. We will tell you when that is the right call. The instruments are what make the seat work on day one.
The method ran inside a software PE firm before it was an offering: our founder built a portfolio talent function there from a standing start, 2021 to 2023. What follows is that case, sanitized and fund-agnostic, the same way every engagement on this site is treated. Not a framework adapted from enterprise HR: instruments built against deal math, on deal clocks, since rebuilt as TL Partners’ own generalized method.
Leadership diligence run on four acquisitions pre-close, scored against each deal’s thesis and delivered deal-team-legible.
Executive scoring rolled into talent density across eight portfolio companies in the US, Israel, and Latin America; search run across seven companies against assessment-defined briefs, not departures.
Workforce planning as a value-creation lever: engineering hubs stood up in Latin America at four companies, planned headcount growth cut at two others, and go-to-market changes with CEOs that lifted revenue per rep 15 to 22 percent.
The full mechanism is public and ungated: The Portfolio Talent Operating System (PDF). Argument first? What private equity keeps getting wrong about talent (PDF). Sanitized on purpose: no fund’s deals, companies, or economics appear in the papers or on this site.
The right question, so plainly: three differences of input, one of sequence.
First, everything is scored against your thesis rather than a generic leadership model, which is why a team can pass a franchise assessment and still fail your plan. Second, the inputs include work-function metrics: where decisions stall, where handoffs break, where effort pools against stated priorities. That is the input family assessment franchises structurally lack, and it is the one that separates a leader who narrates well from a leader whose organization executes. Third, the benchmarks stay with you; every assessment, audit, and search sharpens the next one, inside the fund.
And the sequence: when WHO and HOW are both broken, the instruments say which to fix first. Repair the system enough to see the person, then judge the person against the thesis. Run in the other order, you pay for a search you may not have needed, and most holds only have five or six years to spend.
Fifteen minutes of material, your questions after: the three misreads, the two instruments, and the record above. We leave the one-pager. And if the more useful first step is a deal in diligence right now, say so and we will scope the read this week.
One field and the download starts right away. We send the occasional new brief, nothing else, and we never share your details.