Every company that has to become something it is not yet — bigger, saleable, professionally run, out from under one person — has the same problem: the people inside it are too close to it, and the people who own it are too far away. An operating partner is the person in between. Not a consultant with a deck and a Tuesday call. An operator in the building one day a week, with a seat at the leadership table and a number next to his name.
Free, fifteen questions, five minutes. For founders who know they are the constraint, PE operating teams with a thesis and no operator, and boards that have a plan nobody runs. Answer for what is true in the building this morning.
⇩ Download the Operating Partner one-pager (PDF) One page: how we work, how often, how long, the gates, the outcomes, the fee. Print it or forward it.
Not yet means it depends on the owner, or it lives in someone’s head. Underway means it exists, but a leader two levels down could not describe it. Done means it runs for a full month with the owner out of the building, and the numbers say so.
The value of an Operating Partner is not another set of recommendations. It is an experienced operator inside the company who creates the structure, accountability and operating rhythm that the leadership team can carry forward without him.
Experienced operating judgment at the leadership table without adding another full-time C-suite salary, equity package, recruiting process or permanent layer.
Leadership seats, decision rights, accountability, founder boundaries and underperformance: none of these fix themselves. The Operating Partner creates the forum, the facts and the deadline for the hard decision to get made.
A company becomes stronger when decisions, relationships and operating knowledge move out of one person’s head and into a system the organization can repeat.
The plan is translated into named owners, measurable priorities, a leadership cadence and a scorecard. Progress becomes visible before the quarterly board meeting.
Not coaching from the sidelines. Scott has operated through growth, ownership change, multi-site integration, leadership selection, compensation harmonization and founder transition. The value is knowing where organizations usually stall, and addressing it before the stall becomes expensive.
Not to make the company dependent on an Operating Partner. The opposite: a company that needs less intervention, makes better decisions faster, and can perform without everything routing through the owner.
The thesis turned into the three to five things the building does this quarter, by Hoshin Kanri, with an owner on each. A leadership team assessed against what the thesis needs, not what the company used to be. A board pack on day five written from inside the room.
The founder who is the bottleneck, the leader everyone works around, the seat open for six months, the missed number nobody mentions, the hundred-day plan that is a deck. The fund’s operating partner has nine companies; this one has someone in the building on Thursday.
One page a month — the scorecard, the plan, the seats — and a sponsor call with it. A two-line note every week: what was decided, what is stuck. The diagnostic month ends with a written read you can act on with or without the seat.
The BUILT scorecard — five lines, scored monthly — beside the financials. The seat-by-seat read on the leadership team. The thirteen-week cash forecast the company now keeps. The same page every month, so the board can see the company becoming one that runs without its owner.
Structure without stability is a new org chart that does not actually work. Stability without direction is a well-run company going nowhere. Direction without structure is a strategy deck with nobody clearly accountable. BUILT is the method inside each gate; the gate is the page the owner and the sponsor sign off on. No calendar is attached: a seat moves through the gates at the speed the building can take.
The owner’s question: “Is the company organized so decisions and accountability no longer default to one person?”
The owner’s question: “Does the company run consistently week after week without constant intervention?”
The owner’s question: “Is the leadership team aligned around a measurable direction, and can we see whether execution is producing the intended economics?”
Scalewrights has always been about one thing: building companies that can scale. The Operating Partner seat is how that gets done from inside the building. It is organized around the people and the operating system of the company — who decides, who owns what, how the week runs, how the plan reaches the floor — because that is where scalability is built or lost, and it is what Scott has done as an operator for twenty years.
This is not financial consulting, and it will not pretend to be. I am an operator and an organizational psychologist. The seat is built around what I am — the plan, the people, the week — not around what a checklist wishes I were. That is also why it works.
of private equity value creation since 2010 has come from operational improvement, up from 18% in the 1980s.
is what financial engineering now contributes, down from 51% over the same period. The returns moved into the building.
firms increasingly need specialist operating partners part-time rather than as headcount, keep a pool of external advisers, and want transformation expertise rather than an old playbook applied broadly.
portfolio-company management often lacks the experience to scale; the firms that win work with management early and make them “true partners in value creation.”
Read it plainly: the fund’s own operating team is stretched, the value is in how the company runs, and the people who run it need an operator beside them. That is the seat, and it is why it is priced as a month of work rather than a percentage of anything.
Figures as published by PwC; methodology is the cited author’s. Cited for direction, not as a promise about any company.
Most of the time the Operating Partner seat is one day a week beside the leadership team. Sometimes the company needs the person to hold a real seat for a defined period — because the seat is empty, because the deal just closed, or because the next person is not ready. These are the ones we take. Each is scoped and priced per role, typically two to four days a week for three to nine months, with the handover to the permanent hire built in from day one.
Runs the operating week while the owner steps back or the permanent hire is found. Chairs the cadence, owns the scorecard, has the hard conversations.
The seat Scott held for the acquirer of six manufacturers. Org design, comp and benefits, the leadership bench, HR as one service across sites.
Runs the integration office for a platform absorbing add-ons: the operating model built once, deployed to each acquisition in the same order.
Holds the acquired company’s seat through the first hundred days when the founder has left and the number two is not yet ready.
The person between the fund and the building: policy deployment, the board pack, the hundred-day plan, the things the sponsor does not have time to manage.
HR, most often: one owner through the compensation analysis, the benefits decision and the payroll cutover, then handed to the permanent leader.
Not offered: interim CFO, interim head of sales or marketing, interim CIO. Those are different crafts, and the honest thing is to say so and help you find the right person.
The company grew to the size of one person’s attention and stopped. Every decision routes through the founder. The leaders have titles and ask permission. The founder is tired and a little proud of it.
Decision rights written and set in the systems. The number two named or hired. The founder’s calendar read for a month and every recurring decision given to a seat. The two-week absence run on purpose, with the stack counted.
A founder on top of the company instead of inside it, and earnings that no longer have one name on them.
The company was bought on a plan. The management team is capable and buried. The fund’s operating partner covers nine companies. The hundred-day plan is a deck, and the board pack arrives on day twenty explaining last month.
Policy deployment: the thesis turned into three to five things the building must make true by a date, cascaded to every leader, reviewed weekly. The pack rebuilt to land on day five. The leadership team assessed against what the thesis needs, not what the company used to be.
A management team that can tell the sponsor why they bought the company, in the sponsor’s own words, and a board pack written from inside the room.
One member of the leadership team is in the wrong seat. Everyone knows, including the owner. Two good people have already left rather than keep working around it, and the decision has a date that keeps moving.
The seat-by-seat read, done properly. The conversation held by the owner with the operating partner in the room. A real alternative role if one exists; a dignified exit if it does not. Inside ninety days.
A leadership team that believes the owner will act, which is the thing that makes the next hard conversation possible.
The next generation is in the building and the last one has not left. Nobody is sure who decides. Sunday dinner is the leadership meeting, and the non-family managers have learned to wait.
Roles versus relatives: a charter per seat, decision rights written, the generational handover given a date and a sequence, and the hard conversations held by someone who is neither generation.
A business the family owns rather than a family the business depends on.
The owner intends to sell. The earnings are real and they depend on the owner. A buyer’s team will price that as key-person risk, with an earn-out to keep the owner in the chair.
Build the company that runs without the owner before the buyer arrives to price it: the number two, the cadence, the pack on day five, a leadership team a buyer would keep.
The same earnings, bought as a company instead of a job.
None of these is a finance problem. All of them are organizational dynamics that someone with authority and distance has to resolve in person, week after week, until they become how the company works.
A consultant tells you what to do and leaves. An adviser takes your call. An operating partner is in the leadership meeting on Thursday, reads the scorecard before anyone speaks, has the conversation with the sales leader that the founder has been carrying home for a month, sits with the controller until the thirteen-week forecast is real, and writes the sponsor’s pack from inside the room rather than from a summary of it. One day a week, every week, on retainer, with a seat at the table.
I hold this seat today, inside a founder-led company, on exactly these terms — the strategic plan, the leadership team, the contracts, the week. Before that I held it as EVP of a manufacturer through its growth and its sale to private equity, and as Chief People Officer of the acquirer. The job does not change with the product. It changes with whether somebody is in the building.
What the day is spent on, in the order it usually goes:
The company grew to the size of one person’s attention and stopped. Every decision still routes through the founder, and the founder knows it, and is tired.
The platform was bought on a plan. The management team is capable and busy, the operating partner at the fund has nine companies, and the plan is a deck on the server.
The next generation is in the building and the last one has not left. Roles, decision rights and the hard conversations need someone who is neither of them.
Eighteen months out, with earnings that still have the owner’s name on them. The seat is how the multiple is built before the buyer’s team arrives to price it.
Manufacturing, services, consumer goods, HVAC, distribution — if there is a leadership team and a P&L, it is the same job. The org chart does not care what the company makes.
Two seats at a time, never more, because the seat only works if Thursday is actually Thursday. When both are taken, this page says so and the diagnostic month is still available.
Your score, the camp the company is standing in, how an owner or a board reads it, and the three lines to fix first — with the month of the seat that fixes each.
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Your bearing · the needle marks the weakest line
Your three weakest lines of BUILT, in the order the seat builds them. Each one is a question an owner or a board asks, and the decision that answers it.
The free read told you what runs on the owner. The diagnostic month is Scott in the company for four days, every leader interviewed, the numbers read, and a one-page plan the team can run — you see him in the building before you commit, and so does he. The seat is that plan, run, one day a week.
⇩ The one-pager (PDF) — download or print
The score above, your camp, the three lines, the sentence about how an owner reads the company. Keep it — it is your before picture.
Four days in the building across four weeks. Every member of the leadership team interviewed one at a time, and the founder or the sponsor twice. The last twelve months of numbers read the way a board would read them. At the end of the month: a one-page plan with three priorities and an owner for each, the seat-by-seat read on the leadership team — who stays, who grows, who goes — and the honest answer to whether the seat is worth the next five months. If it is not, I say so and the month stands on its own.
Six months is $75,000. Against two turns on $4 million of EBITDA — the gap between a company that runs on its owner and one that does not — under one percent. Two seats, never more; the diagnostic month holds yours.
One day a week inside the company, in the building or on the line, on retainer. The leadership meeting chaired or co-chaired. The scorecard read every week and the hard conversation had the same week. The plan from the diagnostic month run, priority by priority, with the people who own them. The seats decided — the hire made, the move made, the exit handled with dignity. The founder’s week moved from inside the company to on top of it. For a PE-backed company, the thesis translated into the three things the building does this quarter, and the board pack written by someone who was in the room.
Flat fees only — never a percentage of revenue, EBITDA, a raise or a sale, never a success fee, never a commission, never equity for expertise. Scalewrights is an advisory firm, not a broker-dealer, investment adviser, business broker, or law or accounting firm. The check, the diagnostic month and the seat are operating guidance — not a valuation, a fairness opinion, legal or tax advice, or investment advice. Confirm every figure and structure with qualified counsel for your business.