In today’s episode, we sit down with Ernesto (Ernie) Anguilla from Bain Capital to explore the critical role communication plays in driving business success. Ernie shares his insights on maintaining focus, avoiding distractions, and scaling operations effectively. We also delve into the concept of managing, not controlling, the narrative in communication. Ernie talks about Bain’s journey of codifying their purpose and values, using them as a North Star for their strategies. Signal in the Noise is hosted by Daniel Gaynor, Head of Strategic Solutions at Signal AI.
Below is just a snippet of the conversation. For more episodes, check out the Spotify channel to listen or the YouTube channel. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
"I think it's dangerous to focus on controlling the narrative, because I think controlling the narrative sometimes can be a self-defeating philosophy.” - Ernesto Anguilla.
Dan Gaynor: There's been this sea change in the world of private equity, where almost all of these firms, whereas a couple decades ago had zero public facing organizations, now everybody has a communications head, if not a whole organization supporting them. I would be interested in this swirling, dynamic, very difficult, complex, and geopolitically infused marketplace, and how you think about crafting the Bain Capital narrative and communicating it in a clear, distinguishable way versus the entire peer set that you're up against. How do you think about controlling the narrative as you go month over month, quarter over quarter, year over year?
Ernesto Anguilla: I think it's dangerous sometimes to just focus on controlling the narrative, because I think controlling the narrative sometimes can be, can be a self-defeating philosophy. Quite honestly, it's about managing the narrative, in many cases. Understanding that distinction is where this starts. Communicating in this field has only gotten more complex because our industry is growing. We're touching more industries, and as a result, we're touching more people.
For an industry that was branded initially as private equity, we are now in a place where we have become quite public in a lot of ways in terms of how we think about marketing our approach to communicating. I think it all comes back to fundamentals, and I try to ground myself in this all the time around what is it we're trying to do at the end of the day - writ large - when you think about all the communications, all the marketing work for us, it's differentiation, right?
"How do you constantly press the message of 'this is how we are different.'” - Ernesto Anguilla.
EA: We view ourselves, and we think the market views us, as a bit of a different kind of investor. As you pointed out earlier, we are privately held. We're not public. We have a very consistent approach to generating absolute return on our investments, as opposed to generating fee streams through public market products.
We have a very high level of co-investment with our limited partners. So, one thing we talk about often is that we never invest in anything. We wouldn't put our own money in because we are putting our own money in Bain Capital. Alumni, employees, and partners are the largest aggregate investors across all of our funds, up until and including today.
And so we have these different tenants that have been built into our culture really, since we were founded 40 years ago, that have a direct connection to how we think about investing and what our approach is.
For us as a communications team, it's really about how do you bring that out in every interaction, whether it's a press interview, whether it's a video we're producing, whether it's a podcast, how do you constantly press the message of this is how we are different.
And so whenever I see anything, our team is working on where that Is not clear. That's where I try to kind of reel things back to and try to understand. Well, how are we going to get there? Because that is our number one goal in all of our communications being grounded in a concept like that, whether it's differentiation, whether it's innovation, whatever the case may be, I think, can be really helpful as you're thinking about all the various executions that exist today.
"A new challenge for many of us working in the field is having a grounding sense of your fundamentals.” - Ernesto Anguilla.
EA: I also think that the interesting things that we're doing as earned channels have become more and more important and more and more focused. You know, I think there was a time that those of us who grew up on the media relations side kind of looked down at earned because we said, 'Well, that's not real communications. Real communications is, you know, getting into hand to hand combat with a reporter and getting the headline that you want.' And to some degree that still exists today. But now with everything that's happening in social, you mentioned AI before and kind of how that's revolutionizing every industry, including ours, this whole notion of, you know, 'how do I make my own communications as strong as possible without feeling like I'm constantly cutting an ad for the firm' is a really interesting and tricky challenge.
Frankly, a newer challenge for many of us who have been working in this field for, you know, two decades plus at this point, is having a grounding sense of your fundamentals, what at the end of the day are you trying to accomplish, and then lining up the programs so that they pay that off. That's really fundamentally, I think, what I do pretty much every day here.
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Signal in the Noise is a podcast dedicated to helping today's business leaders navigate the complexities of decision-making by leveraging data and groundbreaking technology—first and foremost, artificial intelligence (AI). You can also watch the interview on our Signal AI YouTube channel here.