Why Past Playbooks Don’t Travel Well Across PE Portfolios

An Operating Partner who relies on a prior “PE playbook” often misunderstands the nature of value creation. Those playbooks were built for specific portfolio companies, under different market conditions, with distinct teams and capital structures.

Each investment thesis demands its own operating model. Applying old frameworks wholesale risks missing the unique context—customer base, growth drivers, organizational maturity, and strategic priorities—that define a new company’s path to value.

The right approach is principle-based, not prescriptive: use proven frameworks and best practices to guide diagnosis and design, but rebuild the playbook from the ground up for the company in front of you.

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Also, Operating Partners should not never import a prior firm’s playbook – it is confidential and proprietary information to that firm. Also, even trying to recall and implement any specific plays rarely fits a new portfolio because context varies by market, product, customer mix, leadership, and capital structure.

Replicating prior approaches even from memory is not best practice. Value creation should begin with first principles and a structured diagnosis, then be tailored using standard frameworks and process discipline.

What good looks like

• Start with a fact base across market, customer economics, product, pricing, pipeline, retention, and org design
• Tie operating moves to the investment thesis and value creation levers specific to this asset
• Use proven frameworks to design the right processes for this company, not to copy prior tactics
• Build the company’s own “Value Creation OS” (or SOP) with clear owners, cadences, and KPIs
• Codify learnings into a bespoke playbook for this asset and this fund

Bottom line
Frameworks and best practices work well but playbooks do not – diagnose first, design the value creation plan after, and then execute with discipline.