FIT TO LEAD
Team Coaching for PE-Backed Businesses
Building the team your Value Creation Plan actually requires
The Character
You've assembled a credible leadership team. Strong CFO. Hungry CRO. Capable COO. On paper, it looks right.
In practice, you're still the hub of every decision, every conflict, and every missed milestone. Functions pull in different directions. The plan looks coherent on paper and incoherent in practice. Stepping back feels impossible.
You don't just want a high-performing team. You want one that executes the plan without you in the middle of everything.
The Problem
A group of capable executives is not a leadership team.
Most PE-backed executive teams are assembled, not designed. Functional boxes get filled through familiarity, urgency, and gut feel. Almost nobody works backwards from the Value Creation Plan to ask what kind of team it actually requires. The result is often a room full of impressive individuals, and a mediocre team.
of team effectiveness is determined by structural choices made before the team ever meets (Hackman, Harvard).
of PE professionals say waiting too long to address leadership team issues led to portfolio company underperformance (AlixPartners).
of firms intentionally align their Value Creation Plans with talent strategy (Carucci & Shappell, HBR).
The Guide
I know what it's like to sit at the head of a table full of capable people and feel strangely alone. I've worked with enough PE-backed leadership teams to recognise the difference between a team with a difficult member and a team with a design problem nobody has named yet.
My approach is systemic, not symptomatic. I don't patch the presenting problem. I change the conditions that produced it — working with the team as a system, not a collection of individuals.
The goal is not a team that needs a coach. It's a team that coaches itself.
Credentials
Certified Practitioner: PERILL (Team Coaching) · PrinciplesUs (Team & Culture) · Hogan (Leadership & Team)
Trained: Global Team Coaching Institute — Foundations & Practitioners Certified Coach
Author: The Exec Team Nobody Designed · Warning Signs of Team Dysfunction
The High-Performing Teams Architecture Programme
A three-phase journey from systemic diagnosis to a self-coaching, self-sustaining leadership team - anchored to your Value Creation Plan.
Diagnose the System
A PERILL diagnostic - interviews with the CEO, each team member, and key stakeholders - maps the six interconnected drivers of team effectiveness. Where helpful, individual and team assessments surface dynamics that interviews alone may not reveal. Together, they build a systemic picture of what is actually driving performance or dysfunction beneath the surface.
What you get: Directional causes, not symptoms - before they cost you a quarter.
Rewire the System
We redesign purpose, collective goals, norms, decision-making, and meeting rhythms - anchored to the Value Creation Plan. We don’t patch symptoms. We change the conditions.
What you get: A team that operates by design, not by default.
Embed and Self-Coach
The CEO evolves into the team’s internal coach. The formal engagement ends. The capability doesn’t.
What you get: A team that doesn’t need a coach to keep performing.
The Framework
The PERILL Model
Developed by David Clutterbuck, PERILL examines the six interacting elements of team effectiveness. A single issue - such as a lack of trust - can have hidden drivers across multiple areas. Addressing one without understanding the others is why most team interventions don't stick.
P - Purpose & Motivation
Clarity of collective purpose, values, goals, and priorities. The foundation on which everything else depends.
E - External Systems & Processes
How the team engages its stakeholders - investors, customers, the board. Often, the source of pressure is what reveals internal fragility.
R - Relationships
Interpersonal dynamics, psychological safety, and the willingness to surface uncomfortable truths in the room rather than the corridor.
I - Internal Systems & Processes
How the team communicates, decides, and operates. Where dysfunction surfaces - but rarely originates.
L - Learning
How the team responds to a changing environment. The difference between teams that adapt and teams that repeat.
L - Leadership
How leadership is helping or hindering collective performance. Often the last thing examined, and the most consequential.
For existing teams
The PERILL diagnostic gives a systemic picture of what is actually driving performance or dysfunction. Root causes, not symptoms.
For new teams post-deal
You cannot diagnose a team that hasn't formed. But you can design it for success before the patterns are set. The highest-leverage work - composition, purpose, goals, and norms - happens in the first weeks, not after the first missed quarter.
Avoid Failure
What happens if nothing changes.
Execution Drift
The CRO, CFO, and COO pull in different directions. Nobody resolves the tension before it reaches the CEO. Milestones slip. Quarters get missed.
The CEO Bottleneck
You become the default decision-maker for everything the team should own. Your highest-value work doesn’t get done.
The Replacement Trap
Executive teams are not machines. They are complex systems. Change one part and the rest responds. Replace the CFO, and you don’t just improve finance - you change the chemistry of the room. Sometimes the change helps. Sometimes it produces a new version of the old pattern. Change the person without changing the conditions - and the conditions tend to win.
Exit Risk
Leadership depth gets scrutinised in buyer diligence. A team that was never properly built will be visible to people who know what to look for.
The Transformation
Before
- Capable individuals who default to silos under pressure
- CEO as referee, bottleneck, and backup - simultaneously
- Meetings that produce apparent agreement and unclear accountability
- Dysfunction nobody names until it becomes a missed quarter
- Leadership changes that shift the personnel but not the pattern
After
- A team that executes the VCP as one unit, not parallel functions
- A CEO who leads rather than referees - with bandwidth for what matters most
- Real debate, clear decisions, genuine accountability
- Problems surfaced and resolved directly - without escalating to the CEO
- A team that the board points to as evidence that the business can scale
Next Step
A group of capable executives is not a leadership team. If the plan depends on collective performance - and it does - let’s talk before the gaps surface in board packs.
Book a Team Conversation
A confidential conversation about your leadership team - where it’s strong, where it’s drifting, and whether the Architecture Programme would help.
Contact Mark