Teams and organisations
The founding purpose still makes sense on paper, and something has drifted. The structure was designed for a world that has moved. Everyone can feel it, and the conversation that would name it keeps not happening. That is the work I do with organisations.
Organisations rarely call because they are between stories. They call because of a symptom. These are the ones I hear most often, and they usually point at the same underlying thing.
Roles and responsibilities were never really defined, and now everything routes through the same three people.
Initiatives accumulate faster than the team can absorb them, and nobody wants to be the one who says stop.
Leadership is capable, exhausted, and holding more than the system was designed to distribute.
Everybody knows what the real issue is. It has just never been said in the same room at the same time.
Most organisational work starts with a solution looking for a home. A new framework, a restructure, an offsite. Sometimes those are right. They are almost never right first.
An institution between stories usually does not need a new strategy at the outset. It needs an accurate read of where it actually is, gathered from the people who live in it, and enough internal honesty to act on what that read reveals. That is unglamorous work, and it is where the leverage is.
Three forms of engagement. They combine often, and they are scoped to the situation rather than sold as packages.
A structured read of organisational health across governance, strategy, people, finance, systems and culture. Interviews, document review, and a synthesis that says plainly what is working, what is not, and what to do first.
Typically four to eight weeks. Delivered as a written synthesis and a restitution session with the leadership team.
Designing and holding the conversations a team cannot hold on its own. Strategy days, governance decisions, conflict that has calcified, retreats that need to produce something more durable than goodwill.
From a single session to a multi-day process. In person or online, in four languages.
Coaching for leaders and leadership teams inside the organisational context rather than apart from it. Individual work, peer formats, and support through transitions where the role itself is changing shape.
Ongoing or time-boxed. Confidentiality with individuals is absolute, including from the people paying.
Five sentences I hear from directors and boards before anything starts. All of them reasonable. All of them worth a second look.
You may well. In my experience the leadership usually does know, and the organisation has still not said it in the same room at the same time. That gap between what everyone knows and what can be named is most of the work.
The diagnosis is not there to tell you something new. It is there to make the known thing sayable, with enough evidence from the people who live in it that acting on it becomes possible.
Most offsites do not, and it is rarely the facilitator's fault. A day away produces goodwill, and goodwill evaporates on the first Monday, because nothing structural moved.
This is why I do not start with an offsite. Diagnosis first, then the conversation the team cannot hold on its own, then a restitution written in a form you can actually use after I leave. If a single session is genuinely what you need, I will say so and keep it to that.
It is specific. It is also, almost always, a recognisable version of something I have seen inside humanitarian missions, foundations and climate organisations across dozens of countries: a structure designed for a world that has moved, and capable people holding more than the system distributes.
Not getting it from the inside is the point. The read comes from your people, gathered by someone with no position to protect. That is what makes it usable.
Then do not add one. Exhaustion is usually a symptom of the thing itself, and an engagement that lands as extra work makes it worse.
What I do is scoped to the situation rather than sold as a package. The lightest version is a handful of interviews, a short written synthesis, and one honest conversation with the leadership team. If that is all the organisation can carry right now, that is what we do.
Possibly true, and I would rather hear it on the first call than discover it at proposal stage. Every proposal I write is specific about cost and short enough to read in one sitting, and if the honest recommendation is that you do not need me, that is what it says.
Two things worth checking first: a diagnosis often fits under an existing organisational development, learning or governance line rather than needing a new one, and funders in the climate and humanitarian space increasingly expect exactly this kind of work and will say so if asked.
A conversation, free
You describe the situation. I ask questions. We work out together whether the problem you have named is the problem you have.
A scoped proposal
Written, specific, with a clear objective, method, timeline and cost. Short enough to read in one sitting. If the honest recommendation is that you do not need me, that is what it says.
The work
Diagnosis, facilitation, leadership support, or a combination. Regular checkpoints, and a standing invitation to tell me when something is not landing.
Restitution and handover
What we found, what it means, and what happens next, in a form your team can actually use after I leave. The aim is that you need me less, not more.
Close to twenty years inside organisations under real pressure, first in humanitarian response and now across the European climate movement. Stated plainly, because these things should be checkable.
Lead organisational development consultant across the climate and humanitarian ecosystems, supporting institutions in Italy, Germany and France
50+ organisations accompanied through diagnosis and organisational development over the last few years
Médecins Sans Frontières, management facilitation and leadership training in humanitarian contexts
Dozens of countries, mostly arriving where systems had already stopped working
ICF ACC coach and EMCC practitioner, with financial and operational management background
Four working languages, French, English, Spanish, Italian
A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. If what you need sits outside what I do, I will say so and point you toward someone better placed.
Based in northern Italy. Working across Europe in French, English, Spanish and Italian.
The same frame at a smaller scale. One-to-one coaching for people whose own ground is moving.
See the coaching practice →