What actually breaks
Headquarters and the U.S. team stop meaning the same thing by:
Agreed · Urgent · Ownership
Feedback · Accountability · Done
Both sides are being reasonable. Both sides are following rules nobody made explicit. It shows up as slow decisions, leadership frustration, turnover, and execution that keeps missing what Germany expected.
The U.S. country manager leaves in month fourteen, and headquarters concludes the hire was wrong.
Send them my way when you hear
- “Headquarters doesn’t trust the U.S. team’s numbers.”
- “We can’t get a decision out of Germany.”
- “Our second U.S. country manager just quit.”
- “They keep asking for context we already gave them.”
- “Everyone agreed in the meeting. Nothing happened after.”
If one of your companies has said any of those out loud, we should talk.
Where I fit
Site selection → Market entry → Launch → Execution → Growth
Your work brings them here. Mine makes it work once they’re here.
Signal audit
A structured diagnostic across both sides of the organization. Where the German and American definitions diverge, what that costs in decision speed and retention, and what changes first.
Executive advisory
Ongoing counsel for German leaders running U.S. operations, and for U.S. leaders reporting into German headquarters.
Workshops and keynotes
Sessions that give both sides a shared vocabulary for what the other one is actually saying, and the specific moves to catch a misread before it compounds.
Why me
Berlin-born, native German, bilingual, based in the U.S.
Former COO of ALBA Berlin, with executive and commercial experience on both sides.
I have run an operation in Germany and I have been misread in America. The method came out of that, not out of a textbook.