Scaling Org Design & Succession for PE Growth

CLIENT: A Private Equity–Backed, Specialized Waste Services Company

OVERVIEW

A rapidly growing specialized waste services company engaged Summit Leadership Partners following a growth investment. With strong historical performance and ambitious four-year growth targets, the business needed a scalable operating model, stronger leadership bench strength, and a succession plan to reduce key-person risk and support continued expansion.

With the business at approximately $270M in revenue and $60M in EBITDA, targeting growth to $500M in revenue and $115M in EBITDA over four years, organizational readiness became a critical enabler of the value-creation plan.

 

CHALLENGE

The company’s success had been driven by a highly experienced leadership team operating in a relationship-driven industry. However, the business lacked a defined succession strategy, deep bench strength, and the process discipline needed to scale efficiently. Leadership bandwidth constraints and limited prior investment in talent development created meaningful risk at a critical inflection point in the company’s growth trajectory.

To protect enterprise value and sustain momentum, the business needed greater clarity on future-state structure, stronger alignment on leadership roles, and a roadmap for talent and succession planning.

 

ACTIONS

Summit partnered with the company and its sponsor to align talent, structure, and succession with the company’s growth strategy by:

• Conducting a comprehensive organization assessment to evaluate the company’s operating model and readiness for scale
• Assessing key leaders individually to understand capability, readiness, and future role fit
• Designing a future-state operating model and org structure built to support growth
• Facilitating an organizational workshop to align leadership on future-state organization before final rollout
• Debriefing individual leaders, the collective leadership team, and the sponsor on findings and recommendations.
• Defining succession priorities, talent implications, role design, and future hiring needs
• Recommending more effective placement of existing talent and the capabilities needed in critical future roles

 

OUTCOME

Summit helped the company and its sponsor align on a future-state organization built for scale and move quickly into execution.

Within weeks of alignment, the company hired a Business Development Manager and an Area Manager, with a defined path for expanded operational leadership.

The engagement delivered a clearer organizational blueprint, stronger succession planning, and a more actionable talent roadmap to support the company’s ambitious four-year growth plan. It also gave leadership and investors greater confidence that the business had a practical path to scale while maintaining continuity, accountability, and operational discipline.

 

CLIENT FEEDBACK

“…I believe you’ve helped us gain a lot of insight and put together a strategy that would have been difficult to articulate without your expertise.”
— Co-founder

“We were all very happy with the discussion and the future state organization that we aligned around. [The Summit] team did a great job!”
— Sponsor