I didn’t accompany it.
I was accountable for it.

Why experience is only worth something once it has hurt.

There are two ways of knowing a transformation.

The first: you read about it. You hear the cases in a seminar, you know the models, you can explain why change fails. That is no small thing. Anyone who can analyse cleanly is worth a great deal in a project.

The second: on Monday morning you are sitting in the room where decisions are made. The figures are on the table, two divisions have disagreed for weeks, a manager has postponed the proposal three times, and everyone is looking at you. Not because they want an assessment. But because you are the one who will have to carry the decision afterwards.

Between these two ways there is no difference of degree. There is a different world.

From the sidelines, every pass looks easy

The view from the sidelines is excellent. You see the whole pitch, you spot the gap, you know exactly where the ball should go. That is why the analysis from outside is often correct.

Only: nobody on the sidelines has ever had an opponent at their back. Nobody there is out of breath. Nobody there decides in a second and a half while three options close at the same time.

That is exactly the difference this is about. Not: who knows more? But: who knows the price?

Anyone who has been accountable for a decision themselves knows what happens afterwards. That a restructuring does not end with the resolution but only begins there. That the manager who nodded in the workshop has to explain three weeks later why two positions in their area are being cut – and that they can either do it or they cannot. That a figure in the status report stays green until it no longer can.

None of this is in any model. You learn it by getting it wrong once and paying the bill for it.

What I have lived through myself

I have been in the financial sector since 1990, more than twenty years of that in leadership roles. But the number of years alone says little. What matters is the role you held during those years.

I led, I did not advise. Up to 360 employees under my responsibility, overall responsibility for 36 branches in Austria. That means: target agreements, appointments, separations, quarterly figures. Including the conversations nobody likes to have.

I delivered a turnaround, I did not facilitate one. At GE Money Bank, from 2005 onwards, it covered 36 locations: building a sales task force, nineteen sales management tools, a certification programme for the branches. After nine months, branch lending volume was 60% higher, the life insurance business had almost doubled, and credit protection insurance was 50% higher. I later wrote a book (in German) about this period – including the parts that did not go smoothly.

I carried P&L responsibility, I did not comment on it. At Cronbank in Dreieich, building up the international business in Austria and the Netherlands was my responsibility, with accountability for results. According to my employment reference, „sehr gute Erfolge vor allem in den Bereichen Neukundenakquisition und Umsatzausweitung“ (“very good results, particularly in new customer acquisition and revenue growth” – translated from German) – and the experience of what it costs to build up a market in which nobody knows you.

I experienced a post-merger integration from the inside. When GE Money Bank Austria became Santander Consumer Bank, I built up the central training and sales management centre. Two cultures, one house, and in between people who did not know whether they would still be there the following year.

I founded a company myself – and wound it up myself. With golf-unique, I built, financed and ran a digital booking platform for golf and eventually sold the technology. After that, I liquidated the company in an orderly manner. Alongside settling a family estate. Those were two years in which I learned what entrepreneurial liability feels like when it actually affects you. I would not recommend this experience to anyone – but I would not want to be without it.

And I helped carry a restructuring programme through to completion. From 2019 to 2022 in Programm Adler of the Volksbank association: programme governance, association-wide escalation management, special projects, mediating between the central institution and the independent banks. The programme was completed ahead of the planned schedule – that is stated in the published 2022 half-year report and is therefore not my claim, but a matter of record.

Eight institutions, twenty-three references quoted verbatim, covering 1996 to 2022. I did not accompany any of it from the outside. Each time, I was the one accountable.

Why authenticity is not a matter of style

Authenticity is often treated as a character trait. As if it were about coming across as likeable. That falls short.

Authenticity in a mandate simply means: what I say matches what I have carried myself. And that has three very tangible consequences for you.

First: I recognise patterns faster. Not because I am cleverer, but because I know them. When the status reports in a programme become conspicuously quiet, I know what usually lies underneath. When two divisions have been arguing over half a position for eight weeks, I know it is not about the half position. This head start in experience saves you months.

Second: I tell you the uncomfortable things, too. Anyone who has experienced what a truth spoken too late costs will not hold it back out of politeness. I do not promise fairy tales. Life is no bed of roses, and anyone who tells you that everyone will be happy in the end will also sell you the idea that heaven is a funfair. I only promise what I can deliver – and then I give it everything.

Third: I take your people seriously. Because I have sat on both sides of the table. I was the one who had to explain the restructuring. I was also the one who had it explained to me. Change is not implemented by organisational charts, but by people who have to carry on working the next morning. Anyone who has done that themselves talks to them differently.

What I expressly do not claim: that experience protects against mistakes. It does not. Every transformation contains uncertainty, and even good plans meet new information. The aim cannot be to rule out every mistake – but to recognise it early and keep its consequences small. You just do not have to make every mistake yourself. I have already made some of them.

What you gain from this

If you are looking for someone to explain change to you, there are good places to go. If you are looking for someone who knows its consequences and is prepared to share the load, let’s talk.

You get me, not a team. You get an honest diagnosis, even when it is uncomfortable. You get someone who stays until things are running – and who leaves again as soon as the waters are clear. And you get a refusal if I am not the right person for your situation. That is the first of my six commitments, and I mean it.

You do not have to believe this. You can check it.

Feel free to start with yourself. I have built six self-assessments – on sales, projects, transformation, change capability and decision quality. Four minutes, no address, no registration; your answers stay in your browser. At the end there is an assessment you can make use of even if you never speak to me. The sixth self-assessment is the most honest of all: it tells you whether it is worth approaching me at all.

→ To the self-assessments: slotta.at/en/self-assessments

And if you would rather talk straight away: thirty minutes, no obligation. At the end you will know where you stand.