Beyond EBITDA: Talent Diligence as a Core Driver of Value

Private equity firms have spent decades proving they can create value through financial discipline and operating rigor. However, in a market where value creation plans are increasingly demanding and hold periods can be disrupted by avoidable talent mistakes, talent strategy deserves the same level of attention as pricing, procurement, and execution. After all, talent risk is value risk.

Talent Belongs in the Value-Creation Plan
For many firms, talent has historically been treated as a softer, HR-led concern rather than a hard value lever. That mindset is becoming increasingly costly. A private equity firm can underwrite the right market, set the right capital structure, and establish the right growth targets, but if the business lacks leadership depth, role fit, and organizational capacity to execute, the investment thesis can quickly weaken.

That is why talent should not sit on the periphery of deal work. It should be embedded directly into diligence and value-creation planning with the same rigor sponsors bring to commercial, financial, and operational analysis. The question is no longer whether people matter—it’s whether the firm knows how to identify the talent factors most likely to accelerate performance or quietly erode it mid-hold.

Throwing Money at People Problems Rarely Fixes Them
A persistent assumption in private equity is that people problems can be solved by spending more: paying above market, making a quick external hire, adding a retention bonus, and moving on. While this approach sometimes works, many firms have learned firsthand that simply throwing money at people issues produces the desired outcome only about half the time. Compensation alone cannot correct poor role fit, weak leadership chemistry, capability gaps, or structural barriers to execution.

The cost of weak human capital diligence rarely appears all at once. It surfaces later, during the hold period.

In other words, talent issues are often diagnosed too late and treated too narrowly. If a company lacks the capabilities needed to deliver the thesis, or if pivotal roles are filled by leaders whose prior success doesn’t translate to the current context, higher compensation may buy time but not necessarily better results. The real advantage comes from understanding where the organization is strong, where execution risk is concentrated, and which talent moves will create measurable value rather than temporary relief.

When Talent Isn’t Your Edge, Treat Expertise as an Investment
Private equity firms are not all built the same. Some sponsors have deep operating resources and a repeatable method for evaluating talent against a deal thesis. Others excel in financial engineering and operational improvement but have less internal capability to identify, optimize, and support talent in a systematic way. There’s no shame in that gap. The risk lies in ignoring it.

If identifying and optimizing talent is not a core competence of the firm, the practical answer is to bring in outside expertise early. External support can help sponsors pressure-test assumptions, identify hidden execution risks, and make better calls on pivotal roles before those decisions become expensive to reverse. In that sense, outside expertise is not an added cost layered onto the deal—it’s a form of risk management that protects value creation and reduces the likelihood of a mid-cycle reset.

The Cost of Rebuilding Talent Mid-Hold Period
The cost of weak human capital diligence rarely appears all at once. It surfaces later, during the hold period, when a business misses milestones, key leaders turn over, teams stall, and the sponsor realizes they’re now paying to rebuild what could have been evaluated much earlier. At that point, the price tag is not limited to search fees or compensation packages. It includes lost time, disrupted momentum, delayed initiatives, customer uncertainty, and pressure on exit timing.

The better question is not, “Has this person done it before?” It is, “Has this person done what this company now needs, in conditions similar enough to matter?

This is why upfront human capital diligence is so important. Rehiring or rebuilding a leadership layer in year two or year three of a hold period is materially more expensive than identifying talent risk before or immediately after close. Once execution slips, the organization is no longer simply filling gaps; it is recovering from avoidable drag on the value-creation plan.

Private equity firms often discuss the cost of being wrong on a market, product, or acquisition assumption. The same discipline should apply to talent assumptions. When those assumptions go untested, firms can spend the middle of the hold period trying to repair misalignment that should have been addressed before the business was expected to deliver at pace.

Don’t Over-Index on Prior Portfolio Success
Another common trap is over-weighting a leader’s prior success in another portfolio company and assuming the same playbook will work again on a new platform. Experience matters, but context matters just as much. A leader who thrived in one portfolio company may have operated with a different market position, team, or set of value drivers.

This is where many firms conflate pattern recognition with precision. It’s tempting to believe that because an executive helped create value in one asset, they’ll generate similar outcomes in the next. But replaying past success is not automatic. Sponsors must evaluate whether the capabilities that mattered in the prior company are the ones that matter now, and whether the current business has the infrastructure to convert that leader’s experience into results.

The better question is not, “Has this person done it before?” It is, “Has this person done what this company now needs, in conditions similar enough to matter?” That distinction can prevent costly mismatches that only become obvious after valuable time has been lost.

Talent Is Not a Soft Issue
Private equity has always rewarded firms that can spot what others miss. Today, one of the most important blind spots is the tendency to treat talent as secondary to the value agenda rather than as a driver of it. Talent strategy is not about adopting a longer-term, softer posture. It’s about making sharper investment decisions now: understanding organizational strengths, identifying execution risk earlier, and aligning talent choices directly to the outcomes the deal must produce.

Firms that do this well aren’t simply better at managing people—they’re better at protecting the thesis, preserving momentum, and avoiding costly rebuilds during the hold period. In a market where sponsors are under pressure to create value with greater precision, talent strategy belongs alongside every other core lever of performance.

About the Author

Stan Hannah, Ph.D., Partner, Plante Moran. As the leader for the Plante Moran talent and organizational development practice, Stan Hannah, Ph.D., guides CEOs and human resource leaders as they encounter challenging decisions about the talent of their organizations. His specialties include succession management, talent assessments, management team due diligence, organizational analysis, and cultural enhancement. Dr. Hannah earned his B.A. in psychology from Michigan State University and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia.