A Quiet Diagnostic
Do you recognize yourself in any of these?
- The founder or CEO is still in every decision - and everything waits on one inbox.
- You bought the tools. The dashboards look fine. Nothing actually changed.
- You tripled the team, and your first-time managers are quietly drowning.
- The strategy is clear in the boardroom and invisible in the room where the work happens.
- People say yes in the meeting, then something else outside it.
- Senior people are leaving exactly when you need speed the most.
These aren't six problems. They're one - a human operating system that never scaled with you. And, unlike a feeling, it can be measured.
What It Costs to Leave It
This isn't a soft cost. It's a leak in execution.
The cost to replace a single regretted senior exit.
Before the hit to roadmap, knowledge, and revenue.
What a dormant alignment problem costs once you let it run a year.
When it surfaces in attrition, reorgs, and a strategy that didn't execute.
The real risk isn't wasting the tool budget. It's multiplying it.
Through reorgs, rework, and churn on an unresolved human layer.
People spend is not a soft cost. It is a driver of execution - and right now it's leaking.
Why Most Interventions Don't Hold
Most fixes start in the wrong place. They redesign the org chart, run a strategy offsite, or roll out another tool. The founder nods, leaves the room, and within two weeks is back in every decision. The structure changed. The system didn't.
I start where everyone else skips: the human layer underneath the tools. Once that layer exists, your tools stop being a graveyard and start doing what they were built to do.
Read the full thinking →The Method
Three phases. One system.
Diagnose
Two reads of the system, before anyone is in a room together. The LCI Team - a 12-dimension diagnostic of leadership-team health. Two weeks, board-grade data.
Then Reboot Map: each leader privately maps what is anchoring them and what is straining them. No one has seen anyone else's data yet. That's deliberate - it builds the safety the group work depends on.
Shift
The leadership team - founder included - enters a structured session. Converge on the few strengths and weaknesses that actually matter. Diverge to brainstorm a cultural pact worth signing - in their own words.
Converge again to define decision rights and goals: who owns what, how conflict gets handled, what each person commits to changing in the next 90 days.
Everyone signs. Including the founder.
Hold
A signed agreement without follow-through is just another offsite. Over three to six months we hold the pact in place - a steady cadence of check-ins and a written record of what held, what slipped, what got renegotiated.
At the end, we re-measure against the baseline. The before/after delta is the proof.
The follow-through is built into the price - not sold as an add-on.
What You Leave With
Deliverables, not an experience.
Not a strategy. Not team building. A new set of rules everyone in the room wrote, owns, and signed.
Who I've Worked With
17 years across enterprise and founder-led companies, at very different stages.
"I had the chance to work with Riccardo in his framework. I personally facilitated workshops using the methodology he created - and I appreciated it. I also used his framework for a scientific study on the quality and speed of decision-making in teams, accepted for publication in the European Management Journal."
"Riccardo's outstanding skills in workshop facilitation and design thinking consistently made a significant impact. His ability to create engaging, collaborative and focused environments ensured that teams could navigate complex challenges with confidence and clarity."
"Riccardo helped us assess Talentware's cultural growth needs and then tailored a strategic workshop for us. Our team appreciated how quickly we were able to diverge and converge on complex topics, leveraging our collective wisdom in an energetic and engaging way."
I work in partnership with Carlo Fontana Giusti (Facilitation Zone, ex-McKinsey) and Tim Leake (Let's Lightbulb, ex-Saatchi & Saatchi) - bringing enterprise-grade method to companies at scaling stage.
Why Me
I don't come from the consulting world. I come from yours.
Seventeen years as a developer, product owner, and innovation lead - including a £3M innovation portfolio inside a FTSE 100. I've lived through the stuck meetings, the strategy that didn't land, the conflicts no one named but everyone felt.
I use that perspective to facilitate the conversations that matter, and to measure what changes after.
More about me →Let's start with a conversation.
The first step is a working diagnostic - a structured 30-45 minute conversation where we locate where your leadership system is actually stuck. You leave with a clearer picture whether or not we end up working together.
Book a working diagnostic →