Improved insights with The Crucible 3.0™.
The Crucible is a performance enhancement research tool exclusively for the private equity-backed middle market. The assessment is custom-built to support our clients in better understanding a candidate’s ability to drive value creation and elevate their portfolio companies.
The Crucible V3.0
The Report.
The Crucible is a customized development tool that was created after recognizing a gap in the market for a resource of its kind. The Crucible was built by private equity experts upon reams of private equity-specific performance data to ensure that the most critical cognitive and behavioral qualities are considered.
Most commonly available assessments are heavily weighted towards either IQ or EQ, but very rarely consider a combination of both. Without addressing both IQ and EQ, and focusing on these attributes in context of private equity, one of the most demanding leadership environments, an individual’s profile depiction is incomplete.
The Crucible is comprised of an intellectual component, a work styles analysis, and a behavioral component. Based on the results, The Crucible offers insights into how candidates’ profiles translate into a private equity environment – individually, as a team, and for a specific fund.
The report includes three types of scores. Scores are shown as percentiles to capture the market, represent the distribution of data, and ensure relevant insights. In addition to the PEQ, the Archetype, and Catalyst and Element scores, the Crucible also provides insight into the Contaminants, the six most frequent causes of leadership derailment.
THE PRIVATE EQUITY QUOTIENT
The PEQ, shown as a percentile, is derived from a weighted average of the 5 Catalysts.
The Crucible derives the PEQ score from the Five Catalysts based on the unique norms of the portfolio company’s preferred behavioral profile. The PEQ represents the potential fit of an individual in the PE space shown as a percentile, from 0 or not a fit to 100 or strong potential fit.
THE ARCHETYPE
The Crucible’s powerful algorithm complements the PEQ by placing each individual into a proprietary Archetype.
While the PEQ measures overall private equity potential in a more general context, the Archetype helps determine the more specific context in which an individual may be most successful (i.e., strategic challenge, sponsor governance model, role, team dynamic, etc.). One individual Archetype is not necessarily more or less desirable than another except in the specific context of the human capital challenge at hand.
Each of the twenty Archetypes is the nexus of an individual’s Transformation Bias and their Leadership Style. Their Archetype can be further contextualized within the matrix as follows:
- Transformation Bias. Pace and rate of change across the columns from left to right.
- Leadership Style. Upper rows index toward outgoing, middle rows more balances, lower rows index toward reserved.
- Decision Making Index. Upper rows index toward instinct and speed, middle rows more balanced, lower rows index toward analysis and accuracy.
THE FIVE CATALYSTS
The Crucible provides performance insights into the Five Catalysts that matter most to value creation in the private equity backed middle market.
The Crucible was built upon the insights of thousands of private equity sample cases, validated by research, and modeled with reams of performance data. As a result, we have identified the five behaviors, or Five Catalysts, that most accurately predict success with a private equity-backed setting. Each of the Five Catalysts is:
- Evaluated as a foundational component of an individual’s profile.
- Derived through a proprietary, weighted algorithm that considers several contributing traits, known as Elements.
- An important dimension AND one that must also be evaluated in the context of a leader’s profile across all Five Catalysts.
- A key contributing factor to an individual’s PEQ score
CONTAMINANTS
In addition to an individual’s PEQ and Archetype, The Crucible provides insight into the six behavioral areas most likely to limit an individual’s upside or contribute to derailment.
These six attributes are Arrogance, Fear of Failure, Fragility, Hesitancy, Lack of Awareness, and the Inability to Adapt. In keeping with the Crucible’s metallurgy theme, we call them Contaminants. Contaminants are most useful in helping identify developmental opportunities that can inform managerial tactics. However, extra caution should be taken where higher scores trip an alarm of elevated potential risk (as indicated by an orange box). In cases where an individual trips multiple alarms, risk increases exponentially.
The Research.
Research is the core of the Crucible. Our insights are driven by identifying patterns in leadership behavioral data.
Contact Us
Contact us at contact@thecrucible.com to learn more about the report, or get started today.
