How is Ontario Teachers’ enhancing resilience across its portfolio?
EKL: At Ontario Teachers’, we’ve been laser focused on the micro – ensuring the key value-added actions are in place across our portfolio. For us, this means doing three things really well.
First, active joint problem solving between operating partners (value creation teams), deal teams and management is critical to unlocking value with greater speed. Everyone is clear about who is digging into which parts of the portfolio and what short- and medium-term actions are being driven in collaboration with management teams. Our value creation efforts deploy a “demand pull” model with deal teams and management teams. In the current environment, the value creation teams are certainly getting pulled in, and we look at resource allocation regularly with our deal teams to ensure we’re collectively focused on the biggest bang for our buck and where we may need to leverage other resources if required (whether across Ontario Teachers’ enterprise or external).
Second, we’re taking active steps to have the right management teams and board talent in place to anticipate and cope with multiple continued headwinds, supporting our overall value creation agenda.
Lastly, there are some innovative opportunities to drive value through new digital technologies, like AI, which we’re experimenting with as we help shape our portfolio companies for the future.