My guest on this episode is Mark Brooks, Managing Director of Permanent Equity. Mark leads Permanent Equity’s post-close operations team, partnering with company leaders to overcome challenges and unlock growth.

Mark is a really reflective person, which you can tell from his writing on Twitter. He's thought very deeply about management and creating transformative teams, and this conversation is dense with value and insights. This episode is a fantastic dive into all things management, including brevity and effective communication, creating an environment that encourages debate and disagreement, and why great teams are crucial to combat process depreciation.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Links:

Mark on LinkedIn

Permanent Equity

Mark on Twitter

Margin call scene: Explain it to me as if I were a child

Morgan Housel

Ben Thompson

Matt Levine on Bloomberg

Topics:

(2:58) - How important is brevity internally in business?

(8:17) - When you think about writing key messages, how would you coach communicating via email?

(10:10) - How do you share ideas across companies?

(13:10) - How do you make sure your companies aren’t reliant on one person?

(17:13) - Is there a long term goal that operators should aim for in terms of the decisions they have to make?

(19:37) - Healthy laziness in delegation

(23:14) - How do you best shift the mindset of a new manager to think more about team performance vs. their individual performance?

(26:40) - What are some common character traits of leaders who are great delegators?

(28:23) - Building a team for space and for stress

(31:45) - How do you evaluate a candidate’s ability to build a team?

(33:26) - When you bring in new managers, are there common behaviors or patterns that need to be adjusted?

(35:59) - The depreciation of processes

(38:38) - How do you create a culture where employees feel comfortable disagreeing with management?

(41:48) - How do you try to pinpoint holes in your own processes and methods?

(44:34) - Of the highest performing operators you’ve seen, are there any consistencies in their daily routines?

(47:55) - What’s a strongly held belief you’ve changed your mind on?

(50:25) - What’s the best business you’ve ever seen?

(52:10) - Which newsletter writers do you really admire?

CEO Series | Katy Dowding, Skanska