Connor Teskey: Inside Brookfield’s Culture, Capital Allocation, and Competitive Edge

Mar 17, 2026 1h 25m 25 insights Episode Page ↗
Connor Teskey, CEO of Brookfield Asset Management, discusses their trillion-dollar investment strategy focusing on high-quality, backbone assets and minimizing market risk. He shares insights on leadership, talent development, leveraging AI for efficiency, and maintaining a long-term, disciplined approach to growth.
Actionable Insights

1. Prioritize Downside Protection

Focus the majority of investment discussions on the downside and underrate the worst-case scenario to ensure the base case is attractive, as this protects capital and allows for asymmetric upside.

2. Act with 90% Certainty

Recognize that absolute certainty is rare in business; when something feels 90% right, proceed with the transaction. Waiting for perfect de-risking often results in missed opportunities.

3. Value Judgment Over Precision

Avoid the trap of seeking perfect precision in models or analysis, as many factors are outside your control. Overlay good judgment and recognize inherent uncertainties, as models can provide a false sense of certainty.

4. Proactively Take Initiative

Take initiative and act on your own prerogative when you’re reasonably sure something is right, especially when not directly supervised. This often leads to a higher success rate than expected and builds momentum.

5. Cultivate a Forward-Looking Mindset

Learn from past experiences but avoid dwelling on them. Maintain a forward-looking perspective to adapt to changing dynamics and identify future opportunities.

6. De-risk Market Exposure

Structure deals and execute projects to minimize market risk, even if it means taking on execution, operating, or development risk. Lock in key variables like construction costs, revenue, and financing simultaneously.

7. Prioritize Liquidity for Flexibility

Consistently ensure access to excess capital, as liquidity is often undervalued when not needed but critically valuable during market downturns or for unforeseen growth opportunities. This provides survivability and competitive advantage.

8. Foster a Culture of Collaboration

Encourage collaboration across all levels and departments, breaking down silos to share information and perspectives. Pull in any individual who can add value to an initiative, regardless of their title or specific role.

9. Develop Talent Early with Responsibility

Identify young talent early and provide them with significant responsibility and accountability. This accelerates their development, giving them more experience and deal reps than they would typically gain elsewhere.

10. Emphasize Clear Communication

Focus not only on doing the work but also on effectively explaining it. Simplify explanations and avoid over-complicating presentations to ensure your message is understood.

11. Be Available for Your Team

Cultivate a strong work ethic by not only doing your own tasks but also by being consistently available to colleagues, both junior and senior, for questions, advice, and bouncing ideas. This availability is often perceived as hard work and fosters team cohesion.

12. Prioritize Others’ Success

Emulate leaders who care more about the success and development of others than their own credit. This fosters a positive culture where individuals are more concerned with team outcomes than personal accolades.

13. Invest in Operational Improvement

Ensure that a significant portion of your return strategy comes from operational improvements after acquiring a business. Leverage internal expertise to support or directly drive change within portfolio companies.

14. Leverage AI for Productivity

Encourage trial and error with AI applications across all portfolio companies to enhance efficiency and productivity. Create a system to share both successful and unsuccessful AI implementations across the entire organization to maximize learning and adoption.

15. Use AI for Preventative Maintenance

Implement AI for preventative maintenance on physical assets by analyzing infinite data points and using pattern recognition. This allows for early detection of issues, preserving value and preventing larger problems.

16. Adopt Asset-Level Financing

Utilize asset-level, non-recourse, long-term fixed-rate financing, even if it’s not the cheapest. This approach isolates risk to individual assets, preventing broader portfolio contamination and offering flexibility for individual asset sales.

17. Embrace Work-Life Prioritization

Recognize that starting a family or taking on new responsibilities can act as a powerful forcing function for prioritization. You will find ways to become more efficient and shed less valued activities without feeling a loss, as they are replaced by things you care about more.

18. Read Before Meetings

Make it a habit to read all relevant materials (emails, decks) before a discussion. This leads to more informed conversations and allows for more thoughtful processing of information.

19. Stay Informed with Daily Headlines

Consume daily updates of relevant headlines in your industry or asset classes. This provides a quick pulse on market direction and helps identify areas for deeper investigation without needing to read every publication cover-to-cover.

20. Manage Crises Unemotionally

Approach crises by digesting information unemotionally to make the best decisions. Focus immediately on mitigating negative impacts and capitalizing on new opportunities created by the downturn, rather than dwelling on losses.

21. Build Local Market Expertise

Establish local teams of investment, operating, and fundraising professionals in every market you operate. Grant them autonomy to source, execute, and operate independently, enabling deep market insight and early identification of value creation or risk mitigation opportunities.

22. Conduct Iterative Investment Reviews

Treat investment committee processes not as single, discrete events, but as continuous iterations. Engage senior individuals for feedback weeks in advance of final approval to allow time for diligence, tweaks, and consensus building.

23. Mix Experience with Energy

Continuously blend young, energetic talent with experienced individuals who have navigated market cycles. This combination allows for fast-moving capability alongside valuable lessons learned, fostering a dynamic and resilient organization.

24. Identify Intellectually Curious Problem-Solvers

Seek out individuals who are intellectually curious and enjoy tackling hard problems that others have struggled with. These people are willing to put in the effort to find solutions that generate outsized positive outcomes for the business.

25. Build Against Long-Term Contracts

In infrastructure development, especially for AI, avoid building on speculation. Instead, build only against long-term contracts with high credit-quality counterparties in tier-one markets to ensure demand and reduce boom-and-bust cycles.