Dinesh Vasandani has been promoted to Managing Director at MiddleGround Capital after joining the firm’s operations team as a director in 2023. Based in Lexington, Ky., he spoke with us about stepping into the new role and how he spends time outside the office.
Tell us a little bit about your background.
I started my career at Toyota as a production engineer and spent 17 years there across product development, lean manufacturing and operations, ultimately running an assembly shop. That experience grounded me in disciplined execution and continuous improvement. I then spent nine years at Boeing, working across operational excellence, industrial engineering, factory operations and new product development. Across both organizations, I operated in complex, high-stakes manufacturing environments. I joined MiddleGround Capital in 2023 to bring that operating perspective into private equity.
What will you be focusing on in your new role?
My focus remains on working with management teams to build scalable systems across pricing, sales effectiveness, procurement and operations, with the goal of creating equity value through repeatable improvements. A key part of my role is helping management teams prioritize. Most companies don’t lack ideas, they struggle with doing too much at once.
What’s a small habit or routine that quietly makes you better at your job?
I use a simple PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) approach to decision-making: define the hypothesis and assess the scenario. I learned this at Toyota and continue to apply it where decisions are constantly made under uncertainty, and having a structured way to learn and improve over time is critical.
What was the last book you read, and do you recommend it?
I recently read “Winning Moves” by Dan Cremons, which emphasizes being intentional about the few decisions that drive outcomes—where to play and how to win, rather than pursuing incremental initiatives. That aligns closely with my approach to private equity: value creation typically comes from a small number of high-impact decisions, where clarity and discipline in decision-making are critical.