Performing, and still losing ground with the board.

Most CEOs know how they're performing. Far fewer know how they're being judged. Those are two different scorecards, and only one of them shows up in the monthly pack.

The scorecard you can't see

In AlixPartners' 10th annual PE leadership survey, 86% of CEO departures from PE-backed businesses were initiated by the fund. Not the CEO resigning. Not mutual agreement. The fund deciding.

The real story is in how those decisions get made: gradually, through operating partner calls, chairman debriefs, and conversations after the board meeting that you're never part of. By the time someone says the concern out loud, the conclusion has usually already formed.

Which means the absence of negative feedback is not evidence that confidence is growing. Sometimes it just means the evaluation is happening somewhere you can't see it. The same holds on a VC-backed board, where investor directors form their view between meetings too.

The signals arrive before the verdict

• Board preparation that takes longer and changes nothing about how the meeting goes
• Explaining decisions in more detail than a supportive board should need
• A question from the lead partner, sharper than the numbers warranted
• The useful conversations happening after you leave the room
• An operating partner's two days a month becoming a day a week

None of it is a crisis, and that's exactly why it gets filed under "something to watch". In my experience, a board forms its view over the first few months, then stops moving. Run the Authority Audit to see how far along it is.

Surrounded by experts. On your own with what decides your future.

Six months into a PE-backed CEO role, you are surrounded by experts. Interim CFOs. Operating partners. Transformation leads. Almost none of it is directed at the CEO as an individual. The support around you is extensive, but it's built to serve the investment, not to serve you.

The chairman is inside the governance structure. The operating partner is part of the evaluation. Peer CEOs are curating the same narrative you are. Your leadership team is reading your signals, not correcting them.

What the work is

An honest external read from someone with no agenda and enough context to know what they are looking at. Weekly, one-to-one and confidential, including from the board and the sponsor.

We work on how you are landing with the board and the investors, where authority is leaking, and the decisions that reset the pattern. It does not yield to more effort, sharper thinking or a fuller board pack. The extra preparation solves the wrong problem.

Why I do this work

I spent five years as a PE-backed CEO. Revenue from £10m to over £20m. EBITDA from £2.1m to £4.3m. When COVID arrived and the fund needed to make a quick call, the performance did not protect me. The business had not failed, but the confidence in me as a leader was not strong enough to make removing me feel like a risk. Read the Coryton story.