This week I sat down with Vinay Raman, the CEO of CAARMO, to talk about the gap between what leadership teams believe is happening inside their company and what is actually happening on the ground. Vinay has spent thirteen years studying that gap. He walked me through the fifteen questions his firm uses to score where a leadership team agrees and where members quietly disagree, and the map his team builds to show exactly where the disagreement lives.

We talked about what happens after a private equity firm buys a company and replaces its leadership team, why a system built for twenty three employees can break at one hundred thirty nine, and why placing AI on top of a broken process only makes the process fail faster. Vinay closed with a daily private equity news product he calls the Pulse, built to hand operating partners one sharp question before they walk into a room.

Chapters:

• 00:03 - Common Sense: Why It's So Uncommon
• 01:02 - Meet Vinay Rahman — Measuring the Gap Between Belief and Reality
• 12:29 - From Misalignment to Coherence
• 18:42 - Leadership: The Biggest Challenge in Portfolio Companies
• 25:20 - Private Equity Analogy: Why 'Copilot' Alone Won't Deliver
• 38:42 - The Future of Private Equity: Value Creation, AI, and the Shift to Effectiveness

CAARMO - Vinay's company scores leadership teams on fifteen questions and builds a map of where the team agrees and where it splits.

Bain & Company - named for research on how much of a strategy actually reaches execution.

McKinsey - named alongside other firms publishing reports on private equity value creation.

KKR - named alongside other firms publishing reports on private equity value creation.

Tesla - referenced through a story about a meeting practice from Tesla's early growth years.

caarmo.com

Vinay Raman on LinkedIn

Vinay Raman is the CEO of CAARMO, a firm that studies execution friction inside growing service businesses. He spent more than twenty years working in data analytics and artificial intelligence before building CAARMO's fifteen question survey and cohesion mapping tools. He produces a daily private equity news product called the Pulse.

I sat down with Dan Grainger, who runs the private equity practice at T4, a voice of customer research firm that ended up in private equity almost by accident. He spends his time inside letter of intent windows, calling the customers of companies my listeners are trying to buy or fix. We talked about what those customers say once nobody from the target company is on the line.

Dan walked me through real deals where customer interviews changed the outcome. One packaging company lost twenty five million dollars off its price after customers described new competitors already undercutting them. Another deal died after a flooring company's dealers reported a failed software rollout that nobody in the boardroom had flagged. We also talked about where artificial intelligence helps his research team and where it still falls short.

Timestamps

Chapters:

• 00:14 - AI's struggle to connect unstructured data
• 01:08 - Guest Introduction — Dan Granger & T4's Private Equity Practice
• 10:59 - Case Study — Hidden Competitive Threats Uncovered Through Customer Interviews
• 19:38 - Customer Diligence Red Flags
• 28:24 - AI in Customer Research — Tools, Limits, and Human Judgment
• 34:50 - Closing Remarks and Contact Info

Companies Mentioned

T4, T4 Associates, Medallia, SAP, ChatGPT

Websites Mentioned

https://www.t4associates.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielgrainger/

Guest Information

Dan Grainger leads the private equity practice at T4 Associates, a voice of customer research firm found at t4associates.com. He previously worked in customer research consulting and spent time at Medallia during its time as a private technology company before moving into private equity diligence work. He interviews target company customers during letter of intent windows to surface risks and growth opportunities before deals close.

In this episode I sat down with Regan Inkster, a strategist who has spent 25 years building strategy for Global 1000 companies and served three times as a chief architect. We talked about a pattern he found in his own research on organizational coherence: the distance between what a company says internally and what employees actually experience appears in performance data before it appears in the financial numbers. He calls this warning window about two quarters, and he built an AI model that reads language across a company to measure it.

We covered real cases, including a merger that destroyed about 75 percent of the deal's value and a widely recognized coffee company where the space between leadership and frontline teams matched swings in market value for years. Regan shared advice for private equity operating partners: close the loop between decisions and the reasons behind them, and check whether the dashboard rewards match what leadership wants the business to improve.

Timestamps

00:02:26 Coherence drifts before financial results

00:04:13 Sensing dysfunction inside an organization

00:08:00 Building the coherence measurement platform

00:16:30 CEO strategy rollout builds agreement

00:18:24 Starbucks coherence linked to market value

00:21:23 Private equity ownership raises mismatch risk

00:32:59 Many AI initiatives fail to deliver

00:41:16 Closing the loop after decisions

Companies Mentioned

IBM

Capital One

Oracle

Starbucks

Fidelity International Systems

World Pay

Netflix

Blockbuster

The New York Times

HBO

Websites Mentioned

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com

Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.com

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com

Indeed: https://www.indeed.com

Guest Information

Regan Inkster spent 25 years building strategy for Global 1000 companies and served three times as a chief architect. He worked as a global go to market and value creation leader at Oracle and as a country lead for emerging tech and AI at a global systems integrator. He wrote the book Two Quarter Warning, which describes how organizational coherence drops about two quarters before financial results do.

Jeremiah Wanzell has spent over two decades scaling consumer brands inside Fortune 100 companies like Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein, and Steve Madden before moving into private equity as an operating partner. In this conversation, he breaks down what buyers actually see in consumer deals before the LOI, what the CIM almost never tells you, and why he built Deal Reveal, a free self-service scorecard that grades a deal across six weighted value drivers in under ten minutes.

We get into the data gap between large enterprise and mid-market portfolio companies, the real reasons Allbirds collapsed and Nike stumbled, and what multi-channel diversity actually means in practice. Jeremiah also walks us through the Capezio acquisition, a fifth-generation family brand that another firm passed on, and why a clear deal thesis and niche market dominance made it one of the best deals in the consumer PE space.

Chapters:

• 00:08 - Understanding Customer Base and Product Value
• 07:27 - Understanding the Gaps in Revenue Stories
• 12:16 - The Digital Opportunity in Business
• 18:22 - Navigating Business Sales: Understanding the Wave of Institutional Capital
• 24:38 - The Importance of Channel Diversity in E-Commerce
• 34:05 - Cautionary Tales: Lessons from Allbirds and Nike
• 40:57 - The Future of CPG Brands and Market Opportunities

Guest Information

Jeremiah Wanzell is a consumer brand operator and private equity advisor with 22 years of experience at Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein, and Steve Madden. He works as an operating partner with PE firms in the consumer sector and originated the Capezio acquisition for Argon, which won M&A Deal of the Year. He recently launched Deal Reveal, a consumer M&A scorecard available at growthmindsetadvisors.com.

Company: Growth Mindset Advisors

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiah-wanzell/

Website: https://growthmindsetadvisors.com/

Companies Mentioned

Hugo Boss

Calvin Klein / PVH

Steve Madden

Capezio

Allbirds

Nike

Adidas

On Running

Hoka

Brooks

Skims

Warby Parker

Amazon / Whole Foods

DSW

Macy's

Shopify

Websites Mentioned

growthmindsetadvisors.com (Deal Reveal scorecard)

Key Takeaways

The CIM shows revenue. It rarely shows revenue quality by channel, customer concentration, or margin by door. That gap is where deals get repriced or killed.

Multi-channel diversity is non-negotiable. Brands that lean entirely on DTC or heavily on Amazon carry structural risk that buyers will price in.

A clear deal thesis before you enter a process is what separates a fast pass from a real opportunity. Capezio got passed by one firm simply because they did not understand the dance wear category.

Start the exit preparation process one to three years before you want to sell. The difference between a 2x and an 8x is often just how ready the business is when it hits the market.

David Newcomb has done something rare in private equity. He operated through two separate transactions at the same company, including the founder exit, and watched the second buyer walk in and say they were acquiring the business because of what he had built. That vantage point gave him a phrase every operator, board member, and sponsor should carry: value drift.

We spent this conversation unpacking what value drift looks like from the inside, why the board pack stays green while the real signals are moving in the wrong direction, and what happens to organizations when leadership changes come faster than the business can absorb them. David also shared what kept him through two holds: doing what he said he would do, quarter over quarter, with whoever was sitting across the table.

Chapters:

• 00:08 - The Transformation of Private Equity
• 03:54 - Understanding Value Drift in Private Equity
• 10:50 - Navigating Founder Exits and Business Value Drift
• 22:22 - Understanding Misalignment in Business Metrics
• 27:23 - The Dynamics of Change in Private Equity
• 31:06 - Navigating Change Fatigue in Private Equity

Guest Information

David Newcomb is a seasoned operator who managed through two private equity transactions at the same company, including the founder exit. He originated the term value drift to describe the erosion of intangible business value that follows leadership transitions and founder departures. He is active on LinkedIn and welcomes conversations from operators, sponsors, and advisors working through similar dynamics.

Companies Mentioned

Bawdy AI

Not Very Private Equity

Websites Mentioned

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com

Bawdy AI: https://www.bawdy.ai

Key Takeaways

Value drift begins before anyone can measure it and compounds quietly until the damage is visible.

Board metrics can signal health while the underlying business is losing the qualities that made it attractive in the first place.

Replacing operators repeatedly without identifying the root cause does not solve the problem and adds real cost and fatigue to the organization.

Doing what you say, consistently, across multiple sponsors and holds, is what separates operators who survive transitions from those who do not.

Philip Curran has spent four decades inside the rooms where leadership either holds together or quietly falls apart. In this episode, we get into the half of the story that most data people never see: the hidden emotional contract between leaders and the people they lead, and why ignoring it costs PE portfolio companies real money before and during exit.

We cover the eight promises leaders make every day whether they know it or not, how leadership misalignment shows up as data problems, and why the hero culture inside PE-backed companies is more of a liability than an asset. If you care about what actually drives returns, this one connects dots you have probably felt but never named.

---

Chapters:

• 00:03 - The Role of Leaders in Shaping Culture
• 11:41 - Understanding the Hidden Emotional Contract
• 16:33 - Understanding Leadership and Decision Making
• 29:40 - Understanding Leadership through Hidden Emotional Contracts
• 43:06 - The Hidden Emotional Contract in Work

**Guest Information**

Phillip Curran is the founder of Renova, a senior human capital advisory firm providing interim CHRO leadership and strategic counsel to CEOs and private equity operators. He is the creator of the ARC Diagnostic, a tool that measures leadership reliability at the enterprise level. His first book, The Hidden Emotional Contract, publishes August 17th.

- Company: Rinnova HR

- LinkedIn: Phillip Curran

---

**Companies Mentioned**

- Renova

- IBM

- Capital One

---

**Websites Mentioned**

- Rinnova HR

- Phillip Curran on LinkedIn

---

**Key Takeaways**

- Culture is the lived experience of the people working for you, driven by the exhibited behaviors of leaders. HR cannot create it.

- When five executives hold five different definitions of an active customer, the cost is not just a reporting issue. It slows decisions, breaks operations, and shows up as eroded exit value.

- The eight promises: dignity, clarity, safety, meaning, growth, recognition, belonging, and agency. Breaking any of them causes people to pull back long before the numbers reflect it.

- Decision velocity always matters in private equity. Anything that puts a foot on the brake, whether role confusion or lack of strategic clarity, destroys value.

- The hero culture PE environments breed is a single point of failure, not a feature.

Philip Curran has spent four decades inside the rooms where leadership either holds together or quietly falls apart. In this episode, we get into the half of the story that most data people never see: the hidden emotional contract between leaders and the people they lead, and why ignoring it costs PE portfolio companies real money before and during exit.

We cover the eight promises leaders make every day whether they know it or not, how leadership misalignment shows up as data problems, and why the hero culture inside PE-backed companies is more of a liability than an asset. If you care about what actually drives returns, this one connects dots you have probably felt but never named.

---

Chapters:

• 00:03 - The Role of Leaders in Shaping Culture
• 11:41 - Understanding the Hidden Emotional Contract
• 16:33 - Understanding Leadership and Decision Making
• 29:40 - Understanding Leadership through Hidden Emotional Contracts
• 43:06 - The Hidden Emotional Contract in Work

**Guest Information**

Phillip Curran is the founder of Renova, a senior human capital advisory firm providing interim CHRO leadership and strategic counsel to CEOs and private equity operators. He is the creator of the ARC Diagnostic, a tool that measures leadership reliability at the enterprise level. His first book, The Hidden Emotional Contract, publishes August 17th.

- Company: Rinnova HR

- LinkedIn: Phillip Curran

---

**Companies Mentioned**

- Renova

- IBM

- Capital One

---

**Websites Mentioned**

- Rinnova HR

- Phillip Curran on LinkedIn

---

**Key Takeaways**

- Culture is the lived experience of the people working for you, driven by the exhibited behaviors of leaders. HR cannot create it.

- When five executives hold five different definitions of an active customer, the cost is not just a reporting issue. It slows decisions, breaks operations, and shows up as eroded exit value.

- The eight promises: dignity, clarity, safety, meaning, growth, recognition, belonging, and agency. Breaking any of them causes people to pull back long before the numbers reflect it.

- Decision velocity always matters in private equity. Anything that puts a foot on the brake, whether role confusion or lack of strategic clarity, destroys value.

- The hero culture PE environments breed is a single point of failure, not a feature.

Philip Curran has spent four decades inside the rooms where leadership either holds together or quietly falls apart. In this episode, we get into the half of the story that most data people never see: the hidden emotional contract between leaders and the people they lead, and why ignoring it costs PE portfolio companies real money before and during exit.

We cover the eight promises leaders make every day whether they know it or not, how leadership misalignment shows up as data problems, and why the hero culture inside PE-backed companies is more of a liability than an asset. If you care about what actually drives returns, this one connects dots you have probably felt but never named.

---

Chapters:

• 00:03 - The Role of Leaders in Shaping Culture
• 11:41 - Understanding the Hidden Emotional Contract
• 16:33 - Understanding Leadership and Decision Making
• 29:40 - Understanding Leadership through Hidden Emotional Contracts
• 43:06 - The Hidden Emotional Contract in Work

**Guest Information**

Phillip Curran is the founder of Renova, a senior human capital advisory firm providing interim CHRO leadership and strategic counsel to CEOs and private equity operators. He is the creator of the ARC Diagnostic, a tool that measures leadership reliability at the enterprise level. His first book, The Hidden Emotional Contract, publishes August 17th.

- Company: Rinnova HR

- LinkedIn: Phillip Curran

---

**Companies Mentioned**

- Renova

- IBM

- Capital One

---

**Websites Mentioned**

- Rinnova HR

- Phillip Curran on LinkedIn

---

**Key Takeaways**

- Culture is the lived experience of the people working for you, driven by the exhibited behaviors of leaders. HR cannot create it.

- When five executives hold five different definitions of an active customer, the cost is not just a reporting issue. It slows decisions, breaks operations, and shows up as eroded exit value.

- The eight promises: dignity, clarity, safety, meaning, growth, recognition, belonging, and agency. Breaking any of them causes people to pull back long before the numbers reflect it.

- Decision velocity always matters in private equity. Anything that puts a foot on the brake, whether role confusion or lack of strategic clarity, destroys value.

- The hero culture PE environments breed is a single point of failure, not a feature.

Behind every value creation plan, there is a data problem. But behind every data problem, there is a people problem. In this episode, I sat down with Kit Lisle, a former US Army intelligence officer turned middle market M&A veteran, who spent 30 years watching private equity backed executives succeed and fail in the same environments for the same reasons.

Kit built The Operators, a peer community now nearly 800 members strong, because he got tired of watching talented executives get dropped into hostile ownership transitions with no map, no lexicon, and no honest conversation about what they were walking into. He also spent six months building his own definition of value creation because he got tired of getting 23 different answers every time he asked the question.

What came out of that work is a six-lever framework that reframes how operating teams and deal teams should think about performance inside a portfolio company. We go through every lever, including the one most people skip straight past, which is alignment, and I push back on a few of his points with what I have seen on the data side inside portcos that are two to three years into a hold and running out of runway.

We also get into why the wait-and-see doctrine is costing PE firms real money, why the definition of "operator" shifts entirely depending on whether the board is happy with you, and what founder CEOs consistently get wrong in the first 90 days after taking institutional capital.

This one is practical, direct, and pulls no punches.

0:00 - Private equity is under real pressure

1:18 - Kit Lisle and his background

2:14 - Defining value creation clearly

3:25 - Alignment as the first lever

8:12 - Operational improvement and change management

11:09 - Fact-based decision making in portcos

14:30 - The Operators community and what sponsors never hear

20:28 - The tension between operating partners and deal teams

25:04 - Why the 80% misalignment rate persists

32:32 - What founder CEOs must do to survive PE

Companies Mentioned

Capital One

IBM

A Claro Growth Partners

The Operators

Websites Mentioned

theoperators.pe (Kit Lisle's peer community for private equity backed executives)

Guest Information

Kit Lisle is the founder of A Claro Growth Partners, a growth strategy firm, and the builder of The Operators, the peer community for private equity backed executives. He spent 30 years in the middle market M&A space and began his career as a US Army intelligence officer. After years of watching misalignment crater value creation plans, he developed his own six-lever framework for defining and delivering value inside PE-backed companies. He is also the author of the Strategic Growth Council advisory group and a regular speaker and contributor inside the PE operating partner community.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kit-lisle/

Website: theoperators.pe

Brandon Micci has spent his career inside some of the largest financial institutions in the world, deploying AI and data infrastructure at a scale most companies only talk about. In this episode, we go into what it actually takes to get AI into production inside a regulated organization, where most initiatives stall before they ever reach users, and what the right sequencing looks like when budget and time are limited.

We cover the lessons from building a 30,000-user analytics culture at Capital One, the compliance reality of deploying a language model to 27,000 people at JPMorgan, and the practical advice any mid-market company can act on right now to get AI working in the right direction.

TIMESTAMPS

[0:52] Welcome to The PE Data Guy

[1:18] Brandon Micci's Career Background

[3:01] Tableau and Capital One Culture

[8:25] Safe AI Rollout Best Practices

[13:41] Building the CEO Dashboard

[17:40] JPMorgan 27,000 User Deployment

[22:25] AI Strategy on a Smaller Budget

[33:50] Investing with a Long-Term View

COMPANIES MENTIONED

Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Southwest Airlines, PwC, Booz Allen Hamilton, Alteryx, Tableau, Oracle, Meta, Palantir, SpaceX, Micron, SanDisk, Lovable, Cursor

WEBSITES MENTIONED

No specific websites were referenced in this episode.

GUEST INFORMATION

Brandon Micci is a data and AI executive who has led large-scale initiatives at Capital One, Citigroup, Southwest Airlines, and JPMorgan Chase. At JPMorgan, he oversaw the deployment of an LLM assistant to 27,000 users across the payments organization. He focuses on helping organizations build a clear ROI case before committing resources to AI.