The Repeatability Engine: Why Sustainable Growth Requires Systems, Not Heroics

Lee McCabe (Claymore Partners) made a post on Linkedin that really resonates with me (guess: it’s about systems;-).
Hence I decided to to build on my previous article re: “Investment Marketing framework: How PE firms can transform portfolio companies into predictable growth platforms”

The private equity industry seems to have awakened to a harsh reality: financial engineering alone no longer creates value. With elevated interest rates and historic valuations, the firms that will outperform over the next decade are those that can systematically transform portfolio companies into high-performance growth platforms.

Yet there's a critical gap between recognizing this need and executing it effectively. Some PE firms seem to be still trapped in what we call could call the Heroics Trap—relying on exceptional individual efforts, one-off initiatives, and unsustainable growth spurts rather than building the systematic engines that create repeatable, scalable value.

Beyond the Execution Gap: The Repeatability Imperative

Our previous post about Investment Marketing revealed how most companies (PE firms included) misallocate marketing dollars by optimizing for performance metrics instead of enterprise value impact. But this represents a deeper strategic blind spot: the failure to distinguish between growth that happens and growth that can be made to happen again.

True value creation in (in PE and elsewhere) comes from answering one fundamental question: Can this business generate the same (or better) results again, without heroic effort?

This shift from heroics to systems thinking requires PE firms to evaluate and build what you could call Repeatability Engines—integrated frameworks that transform sporadic success into predictable, scalable performance.

The Three Pillars of Growth Repeatability

Process-Driven Revenue Architecture

The most dangerous phrase in any portfolio company is "we had a great quarter because..." followed by any explanation involving individual heroics, market timing, or one-off deals. Repeatable growth requires systematic revenue generation across three dimensions:

Lead Generation Predictability: Moving beyond vanity metrics like clicks and impressions to track Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) stability, lead source concentration risk, and conversion rate consistency across channels and time periods.

Sales Engine Systemization: Evaluating whether revenue generation is process-driven or people-dependent through metrics like win rates by individual rep, pipeline velocity consistency, and quota attainment distribution across the entire sales organization.

Customer Value Replication: Ensuring that unit economics and customer lifetime value remain consistent across different segments, acquisition channels, and time cohorts.

Operational Scalability Infrastructure

The misalignment problem we identified in Investment Marketing—where "it is everyone's job but no one owns it"—extends far beyond marketing. Repeatability requires integrated systems thinking across all operational functions:

Automation vs. Manual Dependency: Measuring the percentage of core processes that are automated, the operations headcount ratio to revenue, and most critically, the quality and coverage of process documentation.

Data Infrastructure Maturity: Moving beyond basic analytics to implement sophisticated measurement frameworks like media mix modeling and incrementality testing that enable evidence-based decision-making rather than intuition-based resource allocation.

Technology Stack Utilization: Assessing whether systems are built with modular, cloud-native principles that enable true scalability, or whether they represent monolithic architectures that will create bottlenecks during growth phases or technical debt.

Measurement and Feedback Systems

The transition from performance marketing to Investment Marketing requires treating every euro/pound/dollar as capital allocation with measurable enterprise value impact. This demands measurement frameworks that track:

Value Metrics Over Vanity Metrics: Customer lifetime value, incremental revenue attribution, and enterprise value impact rather than clicks, impressions, and surface-level conversion rates.

Leading Indicators of Sustainability: Process consistency scores, system reliability metrics, and management capability assessments that predict future performance rather than just recording past results.

Competitive Advantage Durability: Whether competitive advantages are systematized and defensible, or dependent on relationships, regulatory environments, or market conditions that could shift.

The Investment Lens: Capital Allocation for Repeatability

Building on our Investment Marketing framework, PE firms must evaluate every operational investment through the lens of repeatability enhancement. This means:

Systems Investment Over Quick Fixes: Allocating capital to build data infrastructure, process documentation, and automation capabilities even when manual solutions appear more cost-effective in the short term.

Long-term Systems Over Short-term Optimization: Focusing on building holistic and end-to-end customer journey analytics and measurement frameworks that enable sustainable competitive advantages rather than optimizing monthly performance metrics.

Integrated Value Creation: Evaluating marketing, sales, operations, and technology investments as components of an integrated growth engine rather than isolated functional initiatives.

Implementation Framework: From Heroics to Systems

For companies ready to move beyond the Heroics Trap, we recommend a systematic approach:

Due Diligence Transformation: Shift focus from historical performance validation to repeatability assessment. Ask not just what happened, but whether it can happen again without the specific individuals, market conditions, or circumstances that drove past results.

Portfolio Company Development: Implement measurement frameworks that track both current performance and the underlying systems capabilities that enable future performance. This includes process maturity assessments, automation coverage analysis, and competitive advantage durability evaluation.

Value Creation Planning: Incorporate repeatability enhancement into deal theses from day one. Set realistic timeline expectations that balance short-term EBITDA goals with the systematic investments required for sustainable competitive advantages.

The Competitive Advantage of Systems Thinking

In an era where "the right answers to the wrong questions" can destroy value faster than poor execution, the ability to build Repeatability Engines can become a sustainable competitive advantage. PE Firms that master this capability will consistently outperform because they're not just buying businesses—they're systematically transforming them into predictable value creation platforms.

The firms that continue to rely on heroics, exceptional individuals, and one-off initiatives will find themselves trapped in a cycle of diminishing returns as interest rates remain elevated and competition for quality assets intensifies.

As we noted in our Investment Marketing analysis, the PE firms that will outperform over the next decade are those that recognize marketing - and by extension, all operational capabilities - as capital allocation rather than expense management.

The question isn't whether your portfolio companies can grow. The question is whether they can grow again, and again, and again - systematically, predictably, and profitably.

Because in private equity, sustainable value creation comes not from heroic efforts, but from heroic systems.
Link to previous post here