Making Talent a Competitive Edge for Private Equity

Making Talent a Competitive Edge for Private EquityBetter Hiring, Higher Retention, Stronger Execution

Client Case Study

Making Talent a Competitive Edge for Private Equity

Situation

This lower middle-market private equity firm focused on industrial and automotive Manufacturing  across North America & Europe.  Their portfolio companies had complex, operationally intensive footprints.  To meet growth targets, they wanted to aligning leadership capability to strategy execution demands.

Complications

The private equity Director knew its value creation plans wouldn’t succeed without the right leaders in place—especially at the executive and operational levels where leadership execution risk tends to hide. Yet traditional methods — interviews, resumes, reference calls — couldn’t predict who would actually lead under pressure.

Their founding partners had experience with behavioral assessments, but needed a solution built for scale, speed, and depth. They turned to our leadership simulation assessments to strengthen hiring and promotion decisions across both portfolio companies and their internal team.  They knew talent decisions in PE-backed companies couldn’t be left to gut feel. They needed real data on whether someone could actually lead in a plant or a dynamic ops environment.

Approach: Making Talent a Competitive Edge for Private Equity

We delivered highly targeted simulation-based assessments that mirrored the real-world scenarios faced by their leaders — conflict, ambiguity, change management — allowing operating partners to assess how candidates actually behave under pressure. Their implementation included:

  • Executive and Mid-Level Simulations: C-suite, CFOs, and plant/ops leadership.
  • Internal Talent Development: Integrated simulation assessments into the hiring process.
  • Scalable Rollout: Used across multiple portfolio companies and geographies.

Results: Better Hiring, Higher Retention, and Stronger Execution
By replacing their unstructured interviews with behavior-based data, the Private Equity firm was able to surface both red flags and high-potential leaders early — often before day one on the job.  The assessments are being used as a roadmap that identifies where to support a new leader and where they may face friction.

  • Retention Uplift:  +26% retention among assessed leaders.
  • Benchmark Performance: 44% higher retention above financial industry norms.
  • Faster Hiring:  24-hour assessment turnaround enabled nimble hiring.
  • Scalable Across Levels: Used from frontline to C-suite across multiple sites.

Related Information

At the onset of our engagement with LSA, I was skeptical that an outside firm would be able to understand and dissect our organization’s highly complex and technical business challenges.

However, through the leadership team interview and strategy retreat processes that LSA utilized, they provided a fresh, innovative, and practical perspective that created tremendous strategic value and focus for our executive leadership team.

As a result, I would highly recommend LSA Global to any leader struggling with building the strategic alignment and high performance teams necessary to generate sales growth, in a way that fits their unique corporate culture.

Robert Laudati
Managing Director

L3Harris_Logo-LSAGlobal

We reviewed the top Leadership Development offerings and selected LSA’s 12-month Leadership Program based upon the value and systemic approach.

The feedback on the program, approach, and results was phenomenal. While other programs may be better known, the other options were more theoretical and did not compare in terms of LSA’s practicality, quality, and results.

We could not be happier.

Stacey Porter
Senior Manager Learning and Development

Roche

Having tripled in size and recently merged, LSA helped our executive team to increase our level of strategic alignment, to solidify our new direction, and to push our agency forward.

As we look to rapidly scale, the clear, actionable, and critical few strategic moves combined with how we differentiate ourselves to our top accounts and target clients has really set us on a great path to success.

This is exactly what we needed to get to the next level. Thank you LSA!

Matt Britton
CEO

MRY logo LSA Global

LSA helped us with leadership development by designing a solution to match our unique needs and culture.

It was a huge success. I would highly recommend LSA to help take leaders and managers to the next level.

Karen King, SPHR
Manager, Human Resources

Alliance Data

As a high growth agency with cutting edge talent, we hired LSA Global to help clarify our strategy and work with our executive leadership team to help implement strategic changes in a way that made sense for our unique culture.

The work was so successful that we also hired them to coach our key leaders. LSA has been instrumental in helping us transition to a new leadership team and triple revenue.  In this age of useless consultants, I highly recommend their practical and business-oriented approach to strategy, culture, and talent.

David Bentley
General Manager

AKQA

I’ve been associated with LSA for the last 8 years and have found them to be extremely professional and client-focused.

I’ve participated in a number of solutions ranging from Performance Management to Leadership Training.  I’ve found the quality to be superior.

They are always well prepared and have definitely done a considerable amount of pre-work in order to customize to our unique culture and goals.

Duane Schroeder
Human Resource Manager

The quality of LSA’s Leadership Training Programs and facilitators is always top notch. We recognize and appreciate the hard work LSA always goes through to align to our unique culture and meet our specific requirements. Thank you for regularly going above and beyond. Your support and dedication, both on the strategic and tactical side, have been outstanding!

Anna Meyer
Leadership Development

Intuit

LSA worked with our Executive Leadership Team to help create strategic clarity and alignment as we look to increase our growth rate and unlock innovation.  They masterfully handled very complex, challenging, and high stakes leaders, decisions, and cultural nuances to help us identify what matters most and move toward one unified direction.

Their practical, straightforward, and client-centric approach to strategy was refreshing.  I highly recommend them to any executive team looking to get aligned to create even higher performance.  They are lights out awesome!

Patrick Resk
Chief Financial Officer, Partner

Porter-Novelli-Logo-LSA-GLOBAL

The customized leadership program was very practical and achieved our goals. LSA adapted very well to our group and the situation and helped us build trust and awareness of successful leadership styles. We look forward to the next steps.

Erik Okholm
Director of Software Development

Thank you for a great leadership development session today. The facilitator was brilliant.  The team got a lot out of it (as did I).

I believe it will help us create an even higher performance culture by ensuring we have a common understanding of how to create higher performance and work toward clear and common strategic goals.

Simon Jefferson
Managing Director

AKQA

I continue to be impressed by the depth and breadth of LSA’s expertise in leadership development, and management development.

What a smart and client-centric group of great people who really know how to help leaders attract, engage, develop and retain top talent in a practical and results-driven manner.

Thank you LSA!

Tracy Esposito
Director, HR Business Partner

Over the years, both at 3Com and now at Redback, I’ve found LSA Global to be a valuable partner. The recent management programs that they delivered for Redback’s executive and management teams was the right solution, of the highest of quality, and customized to fit our unique business and culture. I would highly recommend LSA to any company looking for top quality solutions.

Gina Fulton
Vice President of Human Resources

For our go to training outsourcing partner, LSA provides exactly what we want and need – which is not an easy task.

As always, they design and deliver outstanding leadership development results and high quality management training programs that totally align with our unique business and talent strategies!

Elizabeth Siebert
Director, Organizational Excellence & Development

Intuit

We contacted LSA to help us design and deliver customized management development programs. LSA worked with us to meet our exact needs. We started at the top with our executive team.  It was such a great success that we rolled it out company-wide. We look forward to a long-term partnership with LSA Global and their team of experts.

Barry L. Byrd, SPHR
Human Resources Manager

LSA has been a tremendous asset at my current company and my past company.

As an HR leader, I am always looking for ways to find external resources that can provide impactful leadership and management development expertise. LSA consistently does that for me.

The tools and practices are crisp, business relevant, and easy to apply on the job.

Ken Boehm
VP of Human Resources

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