Hi everyone, I'm reaching out for some perspective on a challenging situation I've been facing at work. I joined a well-known PE firm recently slightly more than a year ago and was initially assigned to a high-profile and visible PortCo (let's name it A). However, due to what I believe to be internal politics and team dynamics, I was recently moved to the negative return performing PortCo in the portfolio which is in a challenging sector I'm not keen on working at all (B). This happened despite my constant indication in interest in staying on A and A's sector and continuous positive feedback on all the work I was doing on A for the whole year. I believe that the move from A to B might be politically motivated (we have few very recent new joiners who were referrals of one of the MDs who were staffed recently on the good PortCos including A, not the shitty PortCo I have got), and is not aligned with my career goals, which are focused on the A's sector. I feel like now I will be stuck in a stagnant sector that doesn't offer much room for growth and nobody cares about. There has also been some ongoing tension with another team member working on A (more junior and subordinate to me) and despite my efforts to collaborate/split work etc, there's been resistance from him to take my input and requests on board and constant pushbacks on my comments and other communication and subordination issues, leading to some inefficiencies and flawed deliverables (basically the senior team asking the same requests after I have already requested from that junior and was pushed back on during my turn of comments). I suspect this may have also influenced the decision to move me from A while he will stay there. Do you think I can realistically turn things around internally from where I am or is my best strategy to keep delivering on B to the best effort while start looking for lateral opportunities outside? I am quite worried that this kind of cornering signals that my growth and promotion prospects are fucked up here. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
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All depends on your role facing the PortCo. Difficult situations for vanilla funds usually bear more scrutiny from top management but few want to get their hands into the business.
As such, I would view this as an opportunity to make myself notice and learn things (which should be the primary driver at that point in time) and get great visibility.
Silver lining to working on a struggling portco is that you will learn a lot. I recognize it’s not exciting and will likely require more from you than the typical portco, but I would recommend seeing this as an opportunity to learn and grow. It’s much better to work on a distressed deal now when you’re junior if that experjence can at all help you avoid leading a deal into distress when you’re more senior.
Plus, if the portco is able to post a “win” you will earn a lot of kudos - while on the flip side, no one will really blame you if things don’t go so well.
Hard to say purely based on what you've described about the dynamics at play here, but is it possible that being put on the "struggling" PortCo is a compliment of sorts? Presumably if everything is going so swimmingly at PortCo A already, your biggest potential value add is going to be at B, not A, if you're a strong contributor.
Or to put in another way: would they put the brand new guy or the low-performer on something that is already struggling? I'm not in PE so maybe the answer is yes, but that's not how we do it in my space.
I've been in the position of having the "toxic" deal dumped on me during some staffing re-shuffles when I was senior enough to be delegated to but too junior to delegate/pass off further. It wasn't fun but I did learn/grow a lot and I think that people appreciated (and remembered) that I took it in stride and did the best I could with a crappy situation that wasn't of my own making.
Best thing to do (IMO) is communicate your goals/desires when and where it's appropriate to do so (e.g., one-on-ones or whatever forum) but do the best you can with the task you've been given in the interim.
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