Next Step LLC

Tom Beaton began working with one of our portfolio companies in 1996. Since then, he has added value to over 20 of our portfolio companies by providing organizational consulting, team building and coaching. In addition, for many years, Tom has helped us with our Firm's strategic planning process, due diligence and the development of our own Organizational Toolkit.

Jane Brock-Wilson
Managing Director,
Berkshire Partners

Tom Beaton has been our “go to” organizational consultant since 1996.

He assists our deal teams by helping to assess the capability of management teams relative to the proposed mission, strategy, and long-term objectives. Post investment, Tom often works with senior management to be positioned and to prepare for rapid and profitable growth,often hyper-growth. Portfolio company boards also benefit from his involvement. Tom has played an important "honest broker" role between management and boards where communications and alignment issues are in play. During our first project with him, Crown Castle International, Tom collaborated with the founders to scale the organization, integrate several acquisitions and help the company grow from its earliest days through its very successful IPO and beyond.

Long ago, Tom earned the trust and respect of the partners at Centennial, and he was invited to become an investor in our partnerships. His commitment and belief in several of our companies is evidenced by his taking stock in lieu of cash to cover his fees. We are pleased to have Tom as a valued resource and a committed member of the Centennial team.

NB: Tom is THE MOST accident-prone person I know. Clients are advised to take this into account and to allow for his annual orthopedic surgery and the consequent physical rehab. But, be patient, he is well worth the wait!

Jeffrey Schutz
Managing Director,
Centennial Ventures

Tom Beaton is an absolute go-to resource for us in all kinds of difficult organizational and personnel situations, but he's also terrific where the task is just optimizing the performance and sense of strategic mission of an already well-functioning team. A consummate communicator, he gains the implicit trust of his clients through a warm and open approach and, as importantly, his quick and deep grasp of a business's organizational, personnel, and strategic challenges.

Tim Palmer
Managing Director,
Charlesbank Capital Partners

Tom is a star.....a smart, thoughtful and experienced confidant who has helped us work through some our most interesting strategic discussions.Tom has a way of getting everyone in the group fully engaged; therefore raising the bar significantly on the quality of the discussion. He has also helped us map our talent base to our strategy in very thoughtful ways.

Joel Cutler
Managing Director,
General Catalyst Partners

We have been working with Tom for nearly a decade, and would recommend him without reservation!  Tom has managed a wide variety of engagements for us, including internal 360 reviews, assessments of new hires, coaching, diligence on prospective management teams, and portfolio development.

In every engagement, Tom has added significant value by helping us improve our leadership styles, selecting and developing our future leaders, and improving our organizational effectiveness. Tom has a uniquely energetic and engaging style that allows him to gather, assimilate, and analyze organizational information more effectively than any other consultant I know of. Most importantly, the breadth of his business experience allows him to take this information and generate insightful and impactful recommendations.

John G. Hayes
Co-Founder & Managing Partner,
Great Hill Partners, LLC

We feel extremely fortunate to have met Tom in 2002. The group engaged Tom to lead us in a strategic planning process that was transformative. The outcome was the construction of a mission statement and a five year “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” which united the group, centered our strategy and re-confirmed our investing focus. Four years later we raced past our BHAG and, more importantly, found we had laid the foundation for our future. We recently re-engaged Tom to assist us in refreshing our strategic plans and refining our mission which has resulted in a renewed passion centered on achieving our next BHAG.

As a result of Pamlico’s positive experiences with Tom, we have recommended his involvement to a number of our portfolio companies. In virtually every case, Tom has earned huge plaudits from our managers for his personal style, organizational insights, and his ability to work with the team to craft answers to the strategic issues the company faces.

Scott Perper
Managing Partner
Pamlico Capital

We have worked with Tom Beaton on a variety of internal consulting assignments over a ten year period and he has consistently delivered value to our organization.

Tom has made the effort to get to know many of the principals here on a personal level, and that has helped him to guide us in directions that make sense for us both personally and professionally.

Tom has become a good friend and valued advisor, and I would recommend him without hesitation to private equity firms and their portfolio companies.

David Hillman
President & Partner,
PNC Equity Partners

Tom Beaton is an organizational consultant who understands the importance of getting the right people in the right jobs along with the right structure to maximize business results. What makes Tom so good at what he does is his unique ability to quickly assess the business strategy and the skills needed on the team to bring about transformational change. Tom was instrumental in the explosive growth that our company achieved when he sprinkled his magic touch on our organization. Thank you, Tom, you are a real pro!

Gary Chartrand
Executive Chairman
Acosta Inc.

At Carter’s, we credit Tom for challenging our executives to think about succession planning. What followed from our initial meetings with Tom was a serious effort to build our Company’s bench strength across all business disciplines. Years later, we went through a sooner-than- expected retirement of our CEO who served in that position for 16 years. Because of Tom’s thought leadership and coaching, we didn’t skip a beat in the transition to a new CEO, promoted from within.

Michael D. Casey
Chairman & CEO,
Carters, Inc.

Tom Beaton is an extremely talented organizational consultant. The best I have worked with. He has been a trusted advisor to Crown Castle from its earliest days, assisting with strategy development, acquisition integration including “First 100 Day’ planning efforts, and, most importantly, raising our organization’s capabilities to effectively manage the significant growth our company enjoys. Tom has made a very positive impact in every area he has assisted us with over the years. He never fails to deliver.

John Kelly
Former President and CEO
Crown Castle International

As a strategic planning and organizational consultant to our technology company, Tom Beaton provided invaluable people insight and breakthrough customer alignment. His natural ability to get people to talk to him generates information that any organization needs to hear. He is also a skilled strategic planning mentor, keeping his clients on track and between a wide set of rails so that they can derive their own set of conclusions that become unifying team objectives. Specifically, Tom helped our previously product-focused telecom/internet company become customer-centered, and guided us to a pioneering classification system of our clients that allowed for industry leading financial performance. I still use this system today when evaluating similar situations.

Michael P. Gallagher
Former Founder and CEO
FDN Communications

We worked with Tom Beaton during a key transitional moment in the development of our company.

Tom helped our management team to both integrate a new acquisition and concurrently adapt from a publicly-traded environment to that of working with our new private equity owners - Berkshire Partners.

We attribute a core component of our success in both endeavors to the thorough evaluation of our internal human capabilities, the evaluation of the talent in the company we were acquiring, the sharing of "integration best practices", and the "secrets to working with a private equity firm" that Tom both taught us and led us through.

He did this in a way that was not only instructive and actionable but also resulted in lasting friendships between Tom and various members of our management team.

I can say with no hesitation that our company culture would be very different today (and not nearly as vibrant or enjoyable) and our company would not be nearly as valuable as it is today - had it not been for our association with Tom Beaton.

Reade Fahs
CEO & President
National Vision, Inc.

Tom Beaton is the best at what he does. As a former President of SABRE, CEO of Swissair, and Founding CEO and Chairman of Orbitz, Tom and I have seen a number of leadership and organization situations around the world together.

Tom is a supremely engaging, humorous, and highly-skilled expert at organizational dynamics, leadership team development, and a strategist for managing change leading to high performance cultures. I have worked with Tom on multiple engagements and each time has been a totally exciting, rewarding and beneficial experience. He is the best. Each time I run into a scenario where his expertise, or simply his input could be of value, I reach for the phone and I recommend him heartily and enthusiastically to leaders that call me.

Jeff Katz
CEO,
NexTag

We were a nonfunctional, sinking ship until Tom plugged the holes.

Tom brought a highly educated and crystal clear vision to aspects of our business that we thought we were resigned to forever. It was a totally liberating experience. After he helped us set our new course, it’s been much smoother sailing through the straits of the business seas.We were a nonfunctional, sinking ship until Tom plugged the holes.

We are eternally grateful to Tom for his invaluable help and would highly recommend him to any business desiring organizational fine tuning.

Andrew Skurman
Principal and Owner
Andrew Skurman Architects

As a consultant to the leadership team at Walt Disney Attractions for several years, Tom partnered with us to roll out a process we called Performance Excellence. We engaged over 50,000 cast members in a successful effort to raise the bar in guest service, productivity and cast satisfaction. Tom brought his passionate leadership and best practices about positive change management; we brought the Disney Magic. Together, we made great strides forward and had a lot of fun along the way. Tom shares our values and will remain our friend forever. The best part is that Tom and I still get to work on projects together from time to time and I always learn from him new ways to approach big challenges.

Lee Cockerell
Former EVP Operations
Walt Disney World