Love Quote by Henry Kravis

Kravis dresses a hard-edged power relationship in the language of teamwork, and that’s the tell. “Love” and “partner” soften what private equity actually does best: install leverage, impose discipline, and demand outcomes. The warmth is strategic; it makes control sound like collaboration, turning a takeover logic into a management self-help mantra.

The pivot point is “incentives.” In Kravis-world, incentives aren’t office perks or vague motivation. They’re engineered alignment: equity stakes, performance targets, covenants, board seats, and the ever-present knowledge that capital can exit or replace you. When he says “provide the right incentives,” the subtext is that management behavior is a design problem. You don’t persuade; you structure the game so the rational move becomes the desired move.

“Very good managers” functions as both compliment and filter. Great operators are the chosen instrument, but the sentence implies a hierarchy: the investor selects, rewards, and frames the time horizon. “Make that management take a long view” is especially revealing. It’s a gentle verb masking a coercive capability. The “long view” isn’t philosophical patience; it’s a plan calibrated to an investment timeline, a deleveraging path, and an exit thesis. It’s long relative to quarterly earnings, not long relative to a workforce, a community, or a product ecosystem.

Context matters: Kravis helped define the modern buyout era, where “partnership” often means management gets upside if it hits the numbers, and everyone else absorbs the austerity required to hit them. The quote works because it normalizes that bargain as enlightened stewardship rather than meticulously incentivized control.