Partners Group launches operational academy

The Zug-headquartered fund manager is teaming up with Harvard Business Publishing to school its portfolio company chiefs on operational best practices.

Partners Group aims to bolster portfolio company growth by teaching its portfolio company executives operating skills.

The firm, alongside Harvard University's Business Publishing arm, which provides business management courses for companies, will open the Partners Group Performance Academy for its direct investment portfolio company management teams. 

Partners Group hopes the school will help them retain key management level talent and provide improved networking and knowledge sharing throughout its portfolio companies.

The school consists of five modules to help the portfolio company executives grow their companies. The modules are: strategy development, strategy implementation, purpose-driven leadership, transformation management and self-development.

Part of the course material is taken from the open enrollment that Harvard Business School runs. That creates a more general approach to the topics Partners Group will train its portfolio management teams on, said Fredrik Henzler, managing director and co-head of Partners’ value creation department. <should there="" be="" quote="" marks="" in="" that="" above="" paragraph?
“It’s like a mini MBA.”
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Each module begins bi-monthly and lasts four weeks. The participants are taught by faculty of Harvard Business School and view online seminars and lectures before moving on to applying what has been learnt to case studies.The final aspect of each module focuses on implementing a project into the participant's own company.

“In a small company it is difficult to expose your top guys to different ways of working and different approaches to tackling operational problems,” Henzler added when explaining the rationale behind the initiative. 

The academy is optional, but there will be a cost to each of the portfolio companies, in order to ensure the full buy in of the management team, said Henzler. 

“The worst thing that can happen is that you have people turn up for the first session and then drop out. We need people who are 100 percent committed towards the program.”

Partners Group declined to disclose the cost of the course, but did say the program will be non-profit.

For more information on operational best practices be sure to check out PEI's second Operating Partners Forum Europe which takes place on 19-20 June in London. For more information click here.