There is one thing that has been driving me completely bonkers lately.
I keep introducing genuinely brilliant executives to people I know. Founders, CEOs, Board Chairs, Private equity partners. People I would happily bet my own reputation on.
Then, a few days later, I get the same message from these executives.
“I’m not sure I’m the right person.” “I’ve never worked in private equity.” “I don’t really know that industry.”
Every single time. And I find myself thinking exactly the same thing.
You’re answering a question nobody has asked you.
Last weekend it happened again. My phone buzzed. “Architaaaaa...”
More than five a’s usually means one of two things. My friend who sent it either had something absolutely spectacular happen, or she was quietly unraveling. This time it was the second.
A few days earlier I had introduced her to Mike, a private equity partner carrying out commercial diligence on a business. I thought she would be fantastic, because she has decades of experience, was commercially sharp, and had actually used the product.
Her message continued, “What do you think Mike is going to ask me?”
I read the message, then I read it again, and my brain (like it does often) wandered somewhere completely different. I had been exactly where she was, and it had taken me “just” four meetings to realize it.
A couple of years ago, someone kept asking me one painfully simple question. “So... what exactly do you do?”
Now, in fairness to me, she had the patience of a saint. Four meetings. Who gives someone four meetings when they still cannot explain what they do? Honestly, I am incredibly grateful she did, because by meeting three I had thrown absolutely everything at her. Commercial strategy, go-to-market, transformation, global leadership, boards, growth.
I honestly cannot remember what else I said. I probably squeezed “value creation” in there somewhere because apparently that is what PE advisors are contractually obliged to do. And she nodded, wrote a bunch of notes, and booked another meeting.
At this point I was questioning my entire existence. Maybe I needed a new website, maybe I needed a new business, maybe nobody actually understood what fractional advisors do.
The fourth meeting was different, because I was just getting tired of listening to myself talk about myself, and most probably had simply run out of executive nouns.
So I stopped talking about my career, and instead I told her what happens inside my head when I walk into a business. The first numbers I do not trust, the assumptions I start pulling on without even realizing I am doing it, and the things that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because I have seen that movie before, and I know how it ends.
She stopped me. “Ok Archita, there, now I finally understand.”
I walked away thinking I had finally figured out how to explain my business. Turns out, that was not the lesson at all.
A few days after my friend’s WhatsApp, I was reading executive assessments for two people, both extraordinary, whom I had introduced to another private equity firm. One was running a €300 million business, and another had spent decades leading internationally. The recommendation said, and I quote, “Better suited to advisory work, not a private equity board.” I remember screaming into my computer, “Oh, for goodness’ sake.”
I was irrationally annoyed, not at the assessment team, which had not got it wrong. They answered exactly the question they had been asked. What bothered me was something else.
I had seen the notes from the conversations. I knew how those executives had introduced themselves. The businesses they managed, the geographies, the P&Ls, the future aspirations. Everything they said was true. But it was also answering a different question.
That is when those four meetings finally made sense. That woman had not spent four meetings trying to understand my business.
She had been trying to understand what would happen if she dropped me into one of hers.
And suddenly my friend’s WhatsApp made perfect sense.
I did not reply with, “Here is what Mike is probably going to ask.” Instead, I left her a voice note. I told her to stop preparing answers about her CV and start preparing observations. If this business became hers this quarter:
- What would you want to understand first?
- What would make you uncomfortable?
- What assumptions would you test before everyone else in the room decided they were true?
- What have 20+ years of running businesses taught you that this business might need next week?
Because friends, that is the conversation. Not “tell me everything you have done.” They already have your CV, they already know your title, they already know the size of the business you ran.
The only thing they cannot read on a piece of paper is how those twenty five years changed the way you think.
That is the part I completely missed in those four meetings. It is also the part I now spend the most time preparing for.
So here is something to try. The next time someone asks you to introduce yourself, do not change your experience. Change the story your experience is trying to tell. Do not leave them with a better understanding of your career. Leave them with a better understanding of how you will help them think.
The room is rarely asking, “What have you done?” It is usually trying to answer a much harder question.
What happens if we let this person help us think?
Once you notice that, you start hearing conversations very differently. I know I do.
Until the next room,
Archita
Join me in two Sundays in the next room. See you there.