Ross Butler speaks with Adrian Letts, Managing Partner in Brookfield’s Private Equity Group and Head of Business Operations. Adrian brings a deep operator’s lens – from founding one of the UK’s first streaming platforms, to leading Tesco’s digital and global e-commerce, to scaling a UK retail-energy company from 500k to 5 million customers through M&A and transformation.

We explore how Brookfield’s “roll-up-your-sleeves” model aligns investors and operators from diligence to exit, and why organisation design, not checklists, is often the decisive value lever.

Alignment from day one: one team, one carry

Brookfield embeds operating leaders alongside investors with identical compensation structures, including carry. Operators sit in origination, diligence, capital reviews, value-creation planning, and exit. The result: no “second-class citizen” dynamic – just a single team accountable for outcomes.

Organisation before levers

Adrian’s first question is organisational: do we have the right people, accountabilities, spans and layers, cadence, and scorecards? With that foundation in place, Brookfield prioritises the three to five highest-return initiatives—rather than twenty half-started projects—so change sticks inside the company.

A small, senior, generalist ops bench

Brookfield’s core team is lean and high-impact—executive-chair types and transformation leaders who stay with a company from diligence through exit. Deep specialist work (e.g., pricing) is brought in from best-in-class partners when needed, keeping innovation high and avoiding a cookie-cutter playbook.

Digitisation & AI: accelerants to existing levers

AI isn’t a magic new lever—it speeds up pricing, procurement, working-capital, and commercial-ops work with greater certainty. A practical example from the portfolio: AI-driven demand and inventory models that correlate seasonality, weather, and vehicle mix to optimise production and free up working capital.

Pace with stability

Transformation moves at the speed the organisation can absorb. Brookfield maps current processes, designs the target model, and sequences change so performance improves without destabilising day-to-day operations—capability that endures after the consultants go home.

Contact Information:

About Fund Shack:
Fund Shack is a private equity podcast and global media channel for alternative investment professionals. Fund Shack is produced by Linear B Group.

Contact:
Katie Mitchell
Email: katie@linearb.media
Company: Linear B Group

About Ross Butler

Ross Butler is the host of Fund Shack and the author of Invest Line A Barbarian: Share in the Spoils of a Private Markets Revolution.

He has spent more than 25 years working across private capital as a journalist, policy adviser and consultant. His previous roles include Editor of Real Deals, Secretary of the EVCA Professional Standards Committee and Director of the Listed Private Capital Association.

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