Work with me

I work in three ways. They rest on one conviction: the bottleneck is rarely the strategy. It is the capacity of the people who have to lead it. Some engagements start with the person and arrive at strategy. Others start with the strategy question and reach the person from there.

How engagements begin

  1. A first conversation. Thirty minutes, free, about your situation. No preparation needed.
  2. A longer conversation, if we both want to continue. What is at stake, what a good outcome would be, and who else needs to be involved.
  3. A short written proposal. Scope, format, rhythm, and fee, on one page.
  4. We begin. Every engagement has agreed points where we look at what has changed and decide together whether to continue.

How engagements end

The aim of every engagement is that you need me less. Coaching ends when you can do on your own what we did together. An advisory relationship changes shape as your team takes on more of the thinking: it may become a conversation once a quarter, or it may end. An interim role ends with a handover we plan from its first day. Team work ends when the team can have its hard conversations without a facilitator in the room.

We agree at the start what would tell us it’s time, and we look at it at every checkpoint.

What I don’t do

I don’t sell software, and I never fold a build into my advice. When a strategy calls for something to be built, I say so plainly, and the build becomes a separate decision. You are free to give it to anyone.

I don’t offer a named method or a program to buy into. What I bring is attention, experience, and judgment, applied to your situation.

Coaching is not therapy. When something comes up that needs a therapist or a doctor, I’ll say so.

How I use AI, and where I don’t.

I use AI every day: to build software, to research, and to test an argument before I bring it to you. It makes my preparation better. What you tell me is a different matter.

In coaching, nothing from our conversations goes into an AI tool, in any form: no recordings, no transcripts, no AI-written notes, not even anonymized.

In advisory and team work, your documents and data go into an AI tool only with your explicit consent, and only into tools your company has approved or that are covered by a data processing agreement and don’t train on your data.

In my writing, the words are mine. AI helps me research and argue with a draft. It doesn’t write the essays.

Practicalities

Languages
German and English
Where
In person in Berlin, elsewhere by arrangement, and by video.
Fees
Priced individually, by scope and format. I share them in our second conversation.
Confidentiality
What we discuss stays between us. I don’t name clients without their permission. For AI tools, see the rule above.

Common questions

Not sure which of the three fits? That’s what the first conversation is for.