Hiring for Strategic Resilience in PE-Owned Manufacturers

From Grid Bottlenecks to Boardrooms: Hiring for Strategic Resilience in PE-Owned Manufacturers

When a supply chain crisis hits, most headlines focus on what’s missing, be it inventory, labor, materials, or capacity. But, those same headlines rarely mention who’s missing.

In private equity-backed manufacturing, particularly in the grid-critical component space, there’s a growing recognition that long lead times, production bottlenecks, and supplier volatility must be seen as leadership problems rather than mere logistical problems.

As transformer shortages deepen, electrical infrastructure investments scale, and timelines shrink under national electrification mandates, the companies that thrive will be the ones led by executives who understand the complexity of building resilience into the system itself, who understand logistical hiccups as larger issues rather than isolated problems to be addressed piecemeal.

In this blog, Kersten Talent Capital explores why hiring for resilience and not just operational efficiency is fast becoming a defining priority for PE-owned manufacturers in the utilities and energy space.

The New Reality of Strategic Constraint

Recent reporting from industry sources such as the American Public Power Association and Utility Dive indicates that logistics delays and supply constraints have stretched transformer lead times to one year for distribution-level units and up to three years for high‑voltage units, deeply impacting grid modernization timelines. At the same time, federal funding through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has fueled unprecedented demand for grid equipment: switchgear, substation parts, voltage regulators, and beyond.

This isn’t a temporary squeeze, but a structural shift. And in this environment, execution risk has gone from theoretical to immediate.

For private equity firms, that risk translates into real numbers: delayed revenue realization, broken customer SLAs, compressed holding periods, and, ultimately, value erosion. But too many still view this as a materials issue when the truth is more complex.

Rather than representing a supply problem, these risks speak to a major, executive-level resilience deficit.

The Cost of Leadership Mismatch

In many founder-led or legacy manufacturing companies, the executive team was built for optimization, not adaptation. They’ve succeeded by minimizing costs, maintaining relationships, and avoiding disruption, not by embracing complexity, redesigning networks, or proactively engineering around volatility.

When those organizations are brought into a PE platform, often as part of a roll-up or bolt-on, the need for a new kind of leadership becomes urgent. Without it, the results are predictable:

• Extended downtime due to overconcentration of suppliers;
• Margin erosion from reactive pricing and lack of cost visibility;
• Lost customer trust due to missed project deadlines;
• Internal burnout from constant fire-fighting without a forward-looking strategy.

This means that resilience must be seen as a bottom-line issue with massive implications for manufacturing organizations, and fixing it starts in the boardroom.

Strategic Resilience Requires Strategic Talent

At Kersten Talent Capital, we’ve talked about the shift from management to _orchestration_. At its core, the differentiator between these two—and the kind of leadership needed today—boils down to the fact that executives are now responsible for designing the conditions in which complexity doesn’t derail the system, rather than just address the derailment on a plant or throughput level when it arises.

Resilient executives who achieve this do three things consistently:

1. Engineer Optionality into Supply Chains

They don’t wait for shortages; they plan around them. That means diversifying supplier bases (including second- and third-tier vendors), building flexible logistics capabilities, and structuring procurement for continuity, not just cost.

2. Drive Operational Foresight, Not Just Efficiency

Instead of relying on historic averages, they build forecasting into the DNA of the organization. They ask: Where are our constraints going to hit us next? What do we need to model? How can we create buffers without bloating the balance sheet?

3. Bridge Technical Depth with Investor Expectations

These leaders understand that resilience must map to return. They know how to translate resilience strategy into KPI language that boards and sponsors understand; for example: connecting cycle time variability to working capital and cash flow modeling.

In grid-adjacent manufacturing, where product specs change slowly but delivery expectations change constantly, this is the leadership sweet spot.

What to Look for in a Resilience-Focused Executive

Not every candidate has what it takes. Many still lean too heavily on Six Sigma-style process control or lean manufacturing playbooks developed for more stable macro environments. Instead, we advise our clients to prioritize candidates who demonstrate:

• Pattern recognition across constrained environments: (e.g., semiconductors, automotive, power electronics);
• Cross-functional literacy: someone who can speak fluently with engineering, logistics, compliance, and finance;
• Resilience case studies: not just theoretical knowledge but demonstrated history of navigating volatility and restoring stability;
• A change leader’s mindset: someone comfortable making hard calls, challenging legacy assumptions, and bringing teams along for the ride.

Your ideal candidate can’t just be a “firefighter.” They must see themselves as a fire prevention specialist who builds structures designed to avoid unnecessary conflagration in the first place.

PE Playbook: Don’t Just Model the Risk. Hire Against It

Most private equity firms are already modeling risk: cost of delays, potential penalties, CapEx overruns, demand compression. Unfortunately, too few are modeling leadership readiness as part of that same equation.

A resilience-focused hiring strategy should be as integral to the value creation plan as working capital improvements or sourcing synergies. That might mean:

• Placing a fractional COO during early-stage integration;
• Hiring a resilience-focused VP of Supply Chain with industry-specific experience;
• Replacing a legacy CEO with a leader who’s scaled manufacturing in high-volatility environments.

You must stop thinking about this approach as simple optional insurance. Nowadays, operational due diligence should be considered bare minimum, table stakes, if you’re serious about sustainable growth.

Resilience Isn’t a Buzzword. It’s a Leadership Requirement.

We are in the early innings of a multi-decade infrastructure supercycle. Electrification, data center expansion, and grid hardening aren’t going away. If anything, they’re accelerating.

But the manufacturers at the center of this movement, particularly those under PE ownership, need leadership that can evolve just as fast as the market. Because when the grid bottlenecks, customers don’t blame the federal government or the utility provider. They blame the supplier.

As such, the supplier’s success, or failure, starts with who’s sitting in the CEO seat, the COO seat, and the head of operations.

At Kersten Talent Capital, we help PE-backed industrial and manufacturing companies find the leaders who design around constraint rather than merely manage it; leaders who provide longevity, flexibility, and a consistent upward trajectory for the businesses they captain.

These are the leaders you need.

Is your leadership team built for resilience or just running hard to keep up?

Let’s talk about what your next hire should look like.