THE EXECUTION GAP: Why PE’s best strategies are failing at implementation

Private equity has never been smarter about what needs to happen. Value creation playbooks are sophisticated. ESG commitments are ambitious. Digital transformation strategies are comprehensive.

Yet execution consistently lags ambition by 18-24 months.

The problem isn’t strategy. It’s the widening gap between knowing and doing.

The Pattern We’re Seeing

Across our portfolio work in 2025, three execution failures appeared repeatedly:

1. The 90-Day Mirage

Firms design elegant 100-day plans with clear milestones. Then reality hits.

Week 1-4: Integration fire-fighting consumes bandwidth
Week 5-8: “Quick wins” take three times longer than projected
Week 9-12: Original plan quietly abandoned, replaced with reactive management

By day 90, teams are exhausted and six months behind.

The issue? Plans built for ideal conditions, not messy reality. No buffer for unknown unknowns. No ruthless prioritization of what actually moves valuation.

What works instead: Start with the three changes that drive 80% of EBITDA impact. Ignore everything else until those three are done.

Sequential execution beats parallel ambition.

2. The Dashboard Delusion

PE firms invest heavily in portfolio monitoring systems. Beautiful dashboards. Real-time KPIs. Automated alerts.

Then make decisions based on quarterly conversations with management teams.

The data exists. It’s just not integrated into actual decision-making.

Why? Because dashboards show you lagging indicators (what happened) while decisions require leading indicators (what’s coming).

Revenue trending down? Your dashboard tells you in week 6. Customer complaints spiking? That signal appeared in week 2, but you weren’t looking.

What works instead: Build early warning systems, not historical scorecards. Track inputs (customer engagement, sales pipeline velocity, support ticket sentiment) not just outputs (revenue, churn, NPS).

3. The Capability Mirage

This year, we watched firms commit to AI implementation, cybersecurity transformation, and ESG data sophistication—all simultaneously.

Reality check: Do you have the internal capability to execute three major transformations at once?

Most value creation teams are 3-5 people. Most portfolio company management teams are stretched thin running operations.

Ambitious roadmaps collide with capacity constraints. Everything moves slowly. Nothing finishes.