The Operating Partner model has become one of the visible answers to the value-creation question in private equity. Funds are expanding their operating teams. Capability is being internalised. Industry-specific Operating Partners are being placed alongside investment professionals on more deals. The instinct, on paper, is correct: in a market where multiple expansion and cheap leverage are no longer doing the work, value has to come from operations.
In our experience, the model often reaches the limit of what authority alone can produce. The Operating Partner walks in with a clear mandate from the fund, a defined remit, and the seniority to be heard. That is not the same as having traction inside the portfolio company. And the gap between the two is where many post-deal value-creation plans quietly stall.
1. Mandate from the fund is not authority inside the company
The fund can be explicit about what the Operating Partner is there to do. The portfolio company management often reads the same arrival differently. The OP is, from the company's side, a senior figure with influence at the shareholder, but without the day-to-day accountability that the operating leaders carry. The first reaction is rarely resistance; it is polite accommodation. Reports are produced, meetings are attended, recommendations are heard. The behaviour the OP is trying to change continues, slightly more carefully managed.
This is not a competence problem. It is a structural one. Authority transfers when it is built into the operating cadence of the company, not when it is announced at a Board meeting. The mandate that the fund grants is necessary; it is not sufficient.
2. Operating Partners are increasingly stretched thin
A pattern is now visible at the industry level. KPMG's 2025 review of value creation in private equity records operating teams expanding but spread across more portfolio companies than the model was designed for, with many Operating Partners covering five or more portcos at once. Coordination between deal teams and operating teams is described, in the same review, as one of the recurring areas of friction.
The practical consequence is uneven engagement. The OP who arrives with the right framework and the right credentials is often the OP who is in the building four days a quarter. Continuity is maintained by the company. The cadence of decision and follow-through depends on who is in the room when the decision has to be made — and the room, in mid-cycle, is usually populated without the OP in it.
3. The decision the OP cannot delegate is the decision the company has not absorbed
The third pattern is the one that determines whether the model works. There is, in every value-creation plan, a small set of decisions that only the Operating Partner can hold — a leadership change, a strategic reset, a difficult commercial move. These are the decisions for which the OP was placed. They are also the decisions whose execution depends entirely on whether the company has absorbed the authority of the role.
When the company has, the decision lands and the organisation moves on. When it has not, the decision is announced and then quietly negotiated downward over the following quarters — softened, qualified, deferred. The OP's authority on paper is intact. The decision the authority was meant to produce is no longer recognisable.
What absorption actually requires
Operating Partner models that work share three properties. The role is integrated into the operating cadence of the company — the variance review, the commercial pipeline, the cash committee — not just into the Board layer. There is a named internal counterpart whose calendar is structured around the OP's priorities, so that work continues between visits. And the decisions that only the OP can hold are explicitly listed, with the company's senior team agreeing in advance which decisions will not be re-litigated downstream.
The mandate is the precondition. The absorption is the work. Without the second, the first becomes a description of what was supposed to happen — recorded in Board minutes, compounding in unrecovered EBITDA.
The Operating Partner model is not failing. It is being asked to do, on its own, what only governance inside the portfolio company can deliver. The two have to be designed together.
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References
- Value Creation in Private Equity, KPMG, 2025.
- Global Private Equity Report 2026: Clearer view, tougher terrain, McKinsey & Company, February 2026.
- KKR Capstone — Approach, KKR & Co., accessed May 2026.