The operator senior leaders call when an operation is bleeding.
Paul W. Swaney III has spent two decades turning around industrial businesses other operators wouldn’t take. Twenty years on submarines, refineries, chemical plants, and McKinsey assignments.
The work, by the numbers.
15+
industries
125
lean transformations led
$7B
P&L owned
20+ years
on the floor
- Former
McKinsey & Company
US Navy
Operations are broken because they’re under-listened-to.
Performance is created on the floor and destroyed in the gaps leadership can’t see. Paul fixes up operational problems by talking to people on the floor, where the truth is.
Because a desk is a terrible place to understand an operation.
Keynotes for operators, COOs, and the people backing them.
Paul speaks to private equity platform retreats, operating-business gatherings, leadership offsites, and turnaround / restructuring conferences.
“Paul’s efforts are changing the way healthcare enterprises operate in this country!”
LeverUp® - My podcast on private equity and entrepreneurship.
The American dream is owning the business, not the house. LeverUp® is my podcast, where I go over mechanics of banking, consulting, and private equity.
Cultural Kaizen™
My must-read book on business.
A business novel about a broken chemical plant, the people who fixed it, and the principle that made the gains stick.
Twenty years of delivering results that stick.
Pharma · Top-tier private equity
$400M check $3.2B exit.
Read the caseA 1,000-person pharmaceutical operation with 85 production lines had started at $100M of EBITDA in June 2016; by January 2017 it was sitting at $84M LTM and heading the wrong direction when a private equity firm brought me in.
Within a year, EBITDA had climbed to $120M. The platform later sold for $3.2B - a 4.2x return on a $400M check, with no one let go along the way.
Fortune 50 consumer health
17% to 50% of capacity, in twelve weeks.
Read the caseA pharmaceutical packaging line at one of the largest consumer-health companies in the world was running at 17% of design capacity.
Twelve weeks later it was at 50% capacity, nearly three times the output, with the same machines, the same people, and no capital spend.
Healthcare distribution
Fixed in six weeks
Read the caseA major player disrupting the healthcare industry brought Paul in to fix a stalled distribution facility.
Six weeks and a three-person team later, the site was running cleanly.
Experience
Paul’s signature keynotes
Explore Speaking
Program 01
MACHINES DON’T BREAK BUSINESSES. PEOPLE DO.
The flagship live keynote experience.
- Format
- Keynote
- Duration
- 45 minutes
- Audience
- Leadership teams and professionals
This keynote challenges the way leaders diagnose performance and reveals why most organizations are solving the wrong problem.
Meet Paul W. Swaney III
Paul Swaney’s career runs from the reactor room of a U.S. Navy submarine to the global investment committee of a top-tier private equity firm. Today he leads Swaney Group Capital, where he continues to run operations inside the firm’s portfolio companies; the practice that informs every keynote, every framework, and every page of his books.
Today he runs his own fund, Swaney Group Capital, and is hands-on across the businesses it operates. He is, above all, an operator: still in the work, still on the floor, still finding the truth that the dashboards miss.
His ability to execute on what he says he will, when he says he will do it, speaks to his character.
The performance you’re looking for is already in the room.
Bring Paul Swaney to your next event to help your audience find the truth inside their own organization — and the conviction to act on it.