Board engagement
Board engagement gap identified across three portfolio companies simultaneously
Healthcare · PE portfolio
The challenge
A healthcare-focused PE firm was conducting annual portfolio reviews across three companies at different stages of their ownership journey. The operating partner had a nagging concern that management teams across the portfolio were not maximizing the value of board engagement, but could not quantify the issue without independent assessment.
What Wexler Gray surfaced
Board Engagement scored below 55 in all three portfolio companies, a finding that the cross-portfolio perspective revealed as a systemic issue rather than company-specific: management teams across the portfolio were consistently under-preparing for board interactions and failing to use the board as a strategic resource
Parallel operator scoring identified a consistent pattern: management teams were presenting boards with information rather than engaging them in decision-making, and were routinely filtering out risk information that they judged would create "unnecessary" board concern
Bearing interpretation framed the cross-portfolio finding as a structural issue with how the PE firm was framing the management-board relationship: management teams had learned — through experience or inference — that boards rewarded positive news and penalized uncertainty, creating systematic under-disclosure of risk
Outcome
The PE firm restructured its board meeting format across all three portfolio companies, introducing a formal "risk register" segment and a structured pre-board briefing process that gave management teams a safe channel to surface concerns before formal sessions. Board Engagement improved in all three companies in the following cycle.
Engagement brief
Request the full engagement brief.
Available to PE operating teams and portfolio company leadership. The brief covers methodology, operator composition, and the full assessment output.