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

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 consistently delivers for me and my team.  Recently they demonstrated the criticality for executives to look beyond current ethics topics and focus on applying fundamental values in everything they do to demonstrate true leadership. They successfully delivered in two hours what most leadership development facilitators would spend an entire day trying to communicate.

Nick Voyvodich, SPHR
HR Manager

Fujitsu

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

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The customized leadership styles and coaching program was the best training that I have ever attended. The facilitators were phenomenal. They have a wealth of experience and knowledge coupled with compassionate and caring styles. I’d highly recommend this leadership training program to any manager, director, or executive looking for a life changing leadership program.

Shoaleh Ghaffari
Director, HR

Cutera

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

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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

Working on our HR Strategy was so eye opening.  I feel so much better prepared to be successful as a leader individually and collectively.

Now the entire HR leadership team can drive our growth strategy forward in a way that makes sense.

Kristin Talastas
Director, HR Shared Services

lucid-motors-logo-LSA-Global

LSA exceeded all my expectations.

We interviewed 7 potential training and consulting partners and selected LSA due to their expertise, flexibility, and breadth and depth of leadership solutions.

We were able to design a highly customized, focused, and relevant management training program that fit our unique needs.

Our leaders and managers galvanized as a team and are better prepared for the rigors of a leading their teams in a very competitive and fast-changing market.

Mitch Mandich
CEO

Edify

Great job in designing the Mergers and Acquisition strategy session for our global leadership team. The session was excellent.

I gained additional insight on the importance of the role of HR regarding strategy, culture, and people in Mergers and Acquisitions and would recommend LSA to anyone looking to align strategies and cultures.

Gloria Veon
Senior Vice President, Human Resources

Fujitsu

LSA’s executive coach based his approach on understanding our business circumstances and strategy, as well as our leadership aspirations. The customized coaching covered all aspects of leadership; it was not simply a touchy-feely endeavor.

In fact, the focus on clear business outcomes and real life circumstances challenged me as a senior leader to develop my thinking and actions related to leading the business.”

Janet Pagano
Managing Director

Ovid

LSA’s action-learning leadership approach has been very beneficial to me, our leadership team, and the entire organization.

The balance of development and results has been excellent.

We have made huge progress, and I was also able to identify 2-3 high potentials while having the extra benefit of people stepping up to carry key strategic projects forward.

The experience was better than anticipated.  I could not be more pleased.

Heather Feltman
President & CEO

LSS

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 turned to LSA to help us custom design and deliver a action leadership and management development curriculum to help drive performance across the company.

They have done an excellent job diagnosing the business situation, designing an approach that fits our unique culture, and delivering first class solutions.  Thank you!

Sally Buchannan
VP Human Resources

You have become our premier change leadership strategic partner. Your expertise in the human side of change is unparalleled and enabled our company to successfully implement our ERP Solution under challenging and ever-changing circumstances.

Thank you for your practical and outcome-oriented approach.

Ted Ramlet
CIO & SVP

McKesson

At a time of change in our marketplace, LSA Global did an exceptional job helping our executive team create strategic clarity by helping us to define, clarify, and prioritize our corporate vision, mission, values, differentiation, target clients, strategic priorities, success metrics and key roles.

They beautifully navigated a very difficult and fuzzy situation, respectfully cleared out all of the cultural elephants, and shared impactful insights and leadership development theories along the way. They have transformed our business.

Laurie Sewell
President & CEO

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