What is an "operationally hands-on" PE firm?

A few answers:

• From my experience, many businesses don’t have the latest and greatest analytics or strategies implemented to manage complex processes. In other words, they often have pretty poor internal accounting, sales, and operating systems that worked to get them to where they are, but they aren’t operating as efficiently as possible. As an example, one of the companies I worked with didn’t forecast accurately and had recurring significant inventory issues.
• Many businesses aren’t optimized to operate effectively—in my experience this can be two flavors: 1) They have bloat in the organization whether it’s crap employees or unnecessary expenses or expenses that could be better spent somewhere else 2) They might not have the best people or funds in positions to encourage growth and need help finding those employees or knowing the type of employees and/or spending that could take the company to the next level.

All this is to point out in theory what hands on operating looks like. That said, a few things that occur in reality:

• Fixing internal systems and processes in a company is very very frustrating. It often involves a 26 year old associate devoting 70+ hours a week for months or even close to years to solve a critical issue that employees in the company don’t want to devote the time to solve or aren’t motivated to solve. There isn’t usually a shortcut to fixing these issues, you just need someone who is a very motivated problem solver working on that problem for months and there aren’t that many of those motivated problem solvers running around that are cheap. As an example, I know a friend who spent nearly 2 years fixing the HR and benefits for a multi-billion dollar company—the several million (maybe even 10s of millions) he saved by doing so, ultimately is what paid his ~400k salary. I myself have spent nearly 6 months fixing the way a company reports their financials and tracks their customers. This involves trying to understand the fucked up internal processes and working with 9 to 5 employees to try and get them to give a shit to change their behavior. This can be very frustrating and difficult. People think learning operations is glamorous and that going to a PE firm they will learn to operate and make great business decisions. In reality, if you do end up doing portfolio company work, it ends up being you potentially devoting 1000+ hours to a narrow issue that plagues a business’s ability to grow fast or operate efficiently, while surrounded by employees who at best are usually appreciative, but not that smart or motivated, and at worst are straight up hostile to you helping. Then, once that 1000+ hour process is complete the company might make a little more ebitda, or you can make a data driven business decision to spend somewhere or cost cut.
• From my experience, LMM and MM companies can be way more internally messed up than one might think from a data and financial perspective. It would surprise you how many companies might not be operating efficiently because they haven’t done a careful data driven analysis of which customers they should sell to or drop and/or returns on spending in areas. A business will survive as long as it turns a profit. Most businesses out there could be growing faster or operating more efficiently and they might be more focused on continuing the process they have going versus thinking about if they could change the way they do things.
• Most PE firms don’t do this. They go to consulting firms and have them do it. That is why there are many PE firms that are ex-consultants (Bain Capital, Golden Gate, Serent being examples at different ends of the market). Most PE firms are in the business of using financial engineering, i.e. they add leverage to a company and arb the growth and potential multiple expansion (historically, but probably not in the future). 

Truthfully, I think the lack of understanding of getting what PE “ops” looks like is because many young professionals don’t understand how long business problems take to solve. Like to accurately gather a company’s historical data and forecast, it could take months of 70+ hour weeks to solve, which is something undergrads tend to have a hard time wrapping their brain around. Often the work is just to organize a company to be able to get to the point where you can make a strategic decision, or the work done is something that needs internal organization and just lots of hours to fix, so they throw a highly motivated PE associate at the problem.