CEO Weekly Outlook

Good afternoon, all. Today, we’re reading about the importance of leaders thinking like each member of the team. Harvard Business Review discusses the benefits: fluency across fields, perspective built on breadth of experience, and heightened self-awareness. Mastering the art of thinking from a different point of view spells success in leading a diverse team.

Meanwhile, PE Hub argues the controversial position that private equity operating partners don’t make sense. The private equity operating partner is currently trending in the industry as a source of hands-on guidance and value creation for acquired companies, but PE Hub decides they often don’t pass the cost-benefit analysis.

Business Insights

• Communicating a corporate vision to your team
• Considering holacracy? Watch out for these red flags
• A way to assess and prioritize your change efforts
• Focusing on the workplace to improve recruitment and retention of Millennials
• How mentoring augments the entrepreneurial journey
• 7 ways people with phenomenal mental toughness fight stress
• Great leaders can think like each member of their team
• High performers and high-potential employees are not one in the same
• Former Apple employee reveals most memorable piece of advice from Steve Jobs
• How great leaders think differently
• CEOs reveal secrets to motivating employees to perform at their peak
• It’s not just the manager who’s responsible for employee motivation; it’s also the CEO

Transaction Toolbox

• Business coaching for senior executives at private equity backed companies
• CEOs, deals in focus at ‘summer camp for moguls’
• The 3 risks your business should prepare for this year
• Greater proportion of corporate cash held in banks
• What to measure if you’re mission driven
• The entrepreneur’s two-letter money maker: no
• Private equity’s dirty little secret: why operating partners don’t make sense
• Private mid-market company earnings rose in Q2
• Sponsor loan volume dips along with LBOs

Middle Market Move of the Week:

Many middle market companies are being sold to private equity firms as add-ons to strengthen the position of a fund’s platform investments. Last week, Ariad Communications, a strategic marketing agency specializing in Canadian clients was added to High Road Capital-owned Bluespire. As both companies serve clients that are often specifically regulated, streamlining the expertise should bring efficiency to the process.

In an interesting twist, the President of Ariad was named CEO of the combined company. The CEO commented he was excited for the combination to help  Bluespire’s market-leading position to expand in Canada and Ariad’s consumer marketing experience to gain presence in the US. Read the full press release here.