Most PE firms don’t have an operating model. They have a PowerPoint.

The “Value Creation Plan” (VCP) has become a kind of corporate theatre.....a glossy internal pitch deck designed to impress LPs, not to actually change how portfolio companies run. It’s full of big promises: digital transformation, pricing excellence, sales enablement. Then it disappears into the ether the moment the deal closes.

In reality, most firms are still managing value creation through ad hoc emails, Excel trackers, and quarterly updates. They talk about playbooks, but they don’t operate from one. The “ops model” is a myth built to sell credibility, not capability.

A real operating model isn’t a presentation. It’s infrastructure. It’s what happens every Monday morning, not every QBR.

Here’s what that would actually look like:

1. Live dashboards, not static reports.
Every portfolio company should feed performance data into a single platform, updated weekly. You don’t need 40 KPIs per company, you need 6 that matter. Revenue, CAC, LTV, conversion rate, retention, and cash. Real-time visibility drives action.

2. Cross-portfolio benchmarks.
Stop pretending every company is unique. The point of owning multiple businesses is to spot patterns and act on them. If one business converts at 8% and another at 3%, that’s an immediate playbook opportunity. You don’t need consultants to find that; you need standardised data.

3. Capability pods.
Hire functional experts.....in digital marketing, pricing, M&A integration....and let them operate across the portfolio. These aren’t advisors or slide-makers. They’re