WHEN PEOPLE HAVE THE SPACE TO DECIDE AND ACT, THE ORGANISATION WORKS.
WHEN LEADERSHIP IS MISSING, I STEP IN.
The strategy is clear. The people are capable. But the organisation cannot execute. Decisions queue. Initiatives stall. The best middle managers leave — not because of compensation, but because their judgement is unwanted. The board knows something is wrong but cannot isolate the cause. I diagnose where the space for discretionary decision-making has collapsed — and work with your team to restore it.
And when the business demands decisive leadership — during transformation, expansion, crisis, or transition — I step in as interim CEO. Board-level mandate, 6–12 months, 30-day diagnostic, structured handover. I make the decisions the organisation has been avoiding and drive the transformation through to the point where permanent leadership can take over.
WHAT I OFFER
The Ermessensspielraum Assessment (TEA)
Diagnosing your organisation’s capacity to decide and act. A structured diagnostic through 12–20 interviews across three organisational levels, measuring nine dimensions.
The deliverable is not a culture report. It is a 3-page board document with radar chart, Consequence Asymmetry heat map, and ROI projection — followed by a 90-day intervention protocol: Assessment → Decision Audit → Signal Decisions → Consequence Contract → Measurement & Capability Transfer. The 90-day follow-up is co-delivered with an internal champion, transferring diagnostic capability so the organisation can continue measurement beyond the engagement.
The only diagnostic that measures the actual space in which people exercise judgement — not engagement, not process compliance, not culture in the abstract. Built from 28 years of operational leadership across four continents.
WHAT I OFFER
Interim Executive Management
I step in as interim CEO, CCO, or Chief Transformation Officer when the business needs a leader who has done this before — not in theory, but in operations, across markets, through crises. Board-level mandate with PE firms, portfolio companies, and family-owned businesses. 6–12 months until the organisation is running under its own leadership again.
Every mandate follows a 4-Phase Operating Model: Immerse & Diagnose, Stabilise & Decide, Transform & Build, and Hand Over & Exit. The model is the same. The decisions are different every time — because I've led P&Ls, rebuilt commercial models, restructured leadership teams, and opened markets that didn't exist yet. That operational experience is what makes the diagnosis faster and the transformation real.
I am not a restructuring advisor or insolvency practitioner. I operate in the space before insolvency becomes a question and above the operational detail that belongs with functional leaders. When I leave, the organisation has a functioning leadership team, a clear commercial direction, a strategy that fits the market it actually operates in, and the operating rhythm to sustain all three.
WHAT I OFFER
FUTURE SEARCH — WHEN THE WHOLE SYSTEM NEEDS TO MOVE
When transformation requires the whole system to move — not just the leadership team — Future Search brings 60–100 stakeholders into one room for a structured 2.5-day conference. Past, present, desired future. Common ground before action plans.
I am a certified Future Search facilitator and have been part of Future Search conferences in previous roles. I know what they can unlock when the organisation needs to align at scale.
It fits naturally into longer mandates when the diagnosis is done, the direction is set, and the organisation needs to move together — but it can also be engaged as a standalone service outside of a mandate.
Future Search has been running across sectors and cultures for over 50 years. What it produces is not a slide deck — it's a shared commitment to act, owned by the people who will carry it out.
START HERE
Half-day diagnostic + one-page board-ready deliverable
A half-day scan that could reveal what engagement surveys and restructuring programmes have missed.
A half-day session with your leadership team. In four hours, we screen your organisation against five diagnostic indicators: decision queues, meeting inflation, the ‘just checking’ culture, talent attrition at middle management, and customer-facing rigidity.
This is pattern recognition built from 28 years of operational leadership — not a survey.
The output is a one-page triage summary with a clear recommendation: proceed to a full Ermessensspielraum Assessment, address specific structural constraints first, or confirm that discretion is healthy and focus elsewhere. No 80-page report. No six-month engagement.
A diagnostic you can take to the board the following week.
WHO THIS IS FOR
Transformation & Leadership engagements are designed for companies at specific inflection points:
- Companies where performance is declining despite capable people and clear strategy — the board knows something is wrong but cannot isolate the cause. Transformations stall, talent attrition accelerates, and customer responsiveness has slowed without obvious explanation.
- PE portfolio companies post-acquisition — where the existing CEO has exited or is transitioning, and the clock is ticking on the investment thesis. The board needs operational leadership to execute the value creation plan while finding a permanent CEO.
- Family businesses and Mittelstand companies in generational transition — where the next generation is not ready and the board needs a proven leader to stabilise and professionalise management during handover.
Let's talk
The first conversation takes 60–90 minutes and covers three questions: what the organisation is facing, what kind of support would make the most difference, and what would need to be true for the situation to improve.
There is no cost and no obligation. If the fit is right, the conversation leads to a scoping proposal within one week. If it is not the right moment, that will be said directly — along with what would need to change first.