PE conferences are broken. Their floor plans tell you quite a lot about the attitude behind them.

“Value creation” gets top billing on the main stage. Operating partners get a separate room, a different floor, sometimes an entirely separate event.

The industry has managed to make the people responsible for delivering the investment thesis a fringe attraction.

Quite an achievement.

And giving operating partners their own conference compounds the problem. We’ve institutionalised the separation, given it a registration fee and called it a community.

Operators absolutely benefit from comparing notes. Specialist sessions have a place. But an entire parallel conference circuit makes it easier for the main PE audience to avoid the operational conversations it most needs to hear.

The operators discuss execution with other operators. The investment partners discuss returns with other investment partners. Everyone goes home with their existing assumptions and a tote bag.

This reflects a stubborn attitude in private equity: buying the business is the prestigious bit. Congrats on the deal toy. Actually improving it is something other people deal with afterwards.

Preferably downstairs. Or at another hotel in November.

The investment partner presenting ambitious growth assumptions should be sitting beside someone who has rebuilt a sales team. The person discussing acquisition strategy should hear from someone who has spent two years integrating the last three purchases.

Otherwise, you get a room full of people agreeing that execution matters, with remarkably little execution experience interrupting the discussion.

Lovely networking. Questionable educational value.

And the same attitude follows people back to the office. Operations gets brought in after the assumptions are agreed, the price is paid and the promises are made.

Then everyone looks disappointed when reality has some comments.

Operating partners should help shape the investment thesis, challenge the underwriting and establish what delivery will actually require. That means authority, early involvement and a voice in the decisions that matter.

PE conferences should reflect that. Shared stages. Shared deal discussions. Investment teams and operators examining the same assumptions in front of the same audience.

If that makes the conversation a little awkward, excellent. We have enough panels where five people politely agree with the SAAS sponsor.

An industry that claims operational improvement drives its returns should stop treating operations as a junior department with its own annual outing.

Start with the attitude. Then fix the bloody conference.