Pouschine Cook Capital Management, LLC is a New York City-based private equity firm. John L. Pouschine, managing director and co-founder, discusses using the high-performance, horizontal model to add value to a firm's investments.

What's your biggest investment challenge?

First, ensuring we get the best investment for our money, which means choosing one company out of every 100 that we are offered: the one with the right set of circumstances, business model, macros, opportunities, management team, and so on. Second, once we've invested, we have to make sure the company has the right strategy, the right people, and is executing properly to achieve its goals.

The high-performance, horizontal team model calls for a radical redefinition of both what it means to be a leader of a team and what it means to be team member.

In the process of building a high-performance team, the leader redefines three fundamentals of leadership . . .

GDS recently acquired Manning Management, Inc. (MMI) and its flagship product, Flying in Formation¨. Richard J. Manning, founder and former CEO of MMI, is now a senior consultant with GDS. In a conversation with GDSI, he shared hard-gained insights on the art and science of project implementation.

"One day not so long ago I was walking down the hall with a senior manager when he stopped and asked an employee what he was doing. "Thinking," replied the employee. "Well, you better hurry up; your presentation is due on Friday," the senior manager fired back."

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