Excerpts from discussion with Mark Wrightsman, CEO, P2G Capital
Tell me more about P2G Capital’s mission and why you are different.
We believe in adding value. Beginning with a relationship with people and their teams, doing work together in areas we have expertise, and are aligned. Let me break that down a bit more.
To add value, we choose to work with businesses to which we bring expertise through past experience, lessons, successes. For us, this is with technical product businesses, engineered solutions companies, those focused in software, IT security, and technical services.
We seek to invest in businesses, and people, aligned with our values, where we can get behind their specific mission, and we might even help them add clarity to their vision. Without what we call MV2alignment: alignment on Mission, Vision, Values, too much energy is wasted. We want the board, management and the company aligned and engaging their energy to do exceptional things for clients, enabling creation of value for all constituents. Everyone benefits from investing their time and energy within a team so engaged and aligned.
Having led organizations through rapid acceleration, turnaround, re-creation from failure as well as startup, we have seen the power of working through and investing in the processes and team development in an organization with aligned values and mission. We think of our role as helping to ensure the business is poised for success, having identified priorities and strategic plans, and while we continue to guide, we get out of the way and let management do what they know best; what they know better than P2G.
I hear what you have said about alignment, and matching your expertise and experience, tell me more – why are you really different than other investment groups?
We have operational experience – all of our P2G principals. We have led teams in technology businesses. My personal experience has been leading small teams of less than a dozen, and several teams with up to around 1,500 – 2000 people. This has been in robotics businesses, nuclear, and power systems businesses, automotive tech businesses, on the board starting up a Leadership organization, and others. We have made mistakes, led companies through the cycles, had to make tough operational calls while keeping the team motivated to accelerate the strength of the business. In each case we have created value and seen leaders develop.
This is quite different than Financial-led investment groups who hire or partner with operators.
OK, I got it. What else can you tell me about P2G, and your own thinking about organizational development?
I worked closely with a Leadership development guru, and close friend, Dr. Scott Gostchock, and we wrote an organizational leadership book together. While we were getting Partner2Learn, a leadership company focused on people’s Strengths, started, we realized we needed to articulate our own model for success. Coming from a background as a leader, doing, I must admit this was a change of pace to stop, consider, and over the course of three years, write down lessons and process expertise gained from others and my own more than 40 years of leadership experience.
The book we wrote, POISED® for Results, is about priorities in leading, a model, a process for leading, efficiently developing a strategy, and then daily, weekly, quarterly, annually, and beyond, executing and improving that strategy, and changing as needed.
I would also add, that in addition to learning from leadership experts over the decades (you can see many references in POISED® for Results) I have had the pleasure more recently of getting to know a true guru on Innovation and organizational knowledge creation – Dr Hiro Takeuchi. He and a partner wrote a book called The Wise Company, How companies create continuous Innovation. Some of my friends/former colleagues in Japan introduced me to Dr. Takeuchi, whose books are fundamentally important in creating enduring companies.
As you would expect, The Wise Company’s focus on Innovation, and our POISED® process for Strategic planning, fit together like a glove. Creating businesses capable of long-term value creation is recognized in the US and around the world as essential, and is the ultimate way to successful investing, in our view. Take a look at Alan Greenspan’s book, which has countless examples of companies over several centuries doing exactly this.
Alright, a lot to take in, but I understand. P2G Capital’s mission to create long term value, and your focus on developing businesses that you can truly understand, is clear. Anything else you want to leave me with?
We are thankful for the experience we have been able to gain, around the globe, the incredibly accomplished, capable, and engaged P2G team, and welcome the opportunity to very selectively work with other teams who appreciate partners that want to make them stronger, providing the opportunity to yield results for all constituents.
References
Greenspan, Alan and Adrian Wooldridge. 2018. Capitalism in America. New York, NY: Penguin Press.
Nonaka, Ikujiro and Hirotaka Takeuchi. 2019. The Wise Company: How Companies Create Continuous Innovation. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Wrightsman, Mark and Scott Gostchock. 2023. POISED® for Results. New York, NY: Morgan James Publishing.