Who am I? A Professor biased to action, an "Action Professor". Before and after becoming a full faculty member at a leading Business School, I served as a consultant, as a manager, as a board member and an entrepreneur.
What do I do? I work with leaders helping them to improve their people's performance. My role can range from a keynote speech, to facilitating board meetings or workshops, to advisory or teaching. I specialise in strategy, leadership, problem solving and family business. Whom do I serve best? My typical client is a medium to large businesses. My internal client can be the CEO, the HR manager, a BU or functional leader or the ownership. My audience within a company is large and ranges from high potentials to board members. Clients see me as a ressource they can call in when they need an academic insider, with a grounded on-the-field experience, a bridge between academy and the business arena. |
As a consultant at McKinsey & Company I have learned very important core skills and I have started my professional journey .
Outstanding colleagues and clients were my sparring partners for learning core competencies such as problem solving, communication, trust based service, commitment, self efficacy. Through the journey, I have developed my personal framing of key business challenges: most of the time performance road blocks lie with people and not with technology, knowledge or strategy. Such considerations gave birth to my curiosity in terms of people performance, motivation, mindset and behaviours. |
ESCP Europe came back into my life 6 years after graduation. As an alumni, I was called in for proposing a candidate city for the school's fifth campus in Italy. Together with other alumni and friends, we have proposed the winning candidate: the city of Torino. I have then been asked to "run the shop", which I did for 10 years, after leaving McKinsey & Company.
Joining an academic environment allowed me to build up upon my consulting background and add academic rigour and teaching skills: I have competed my PhD and started to teach straight away. The blend of on-the-field business experiences, as a consultant and "ex-catedra" academic experiences, it has soon developed a distintive capability, which is quite rare on the market and highly appreciated by the business world. |
Harvard Business School is indeed a key pillar in my development as a Professor. During my transition from consulting to the academy, I was challenged by learning to be a good researcher and a good teacher. A PhD is the main stream solution to the research challenge. Whereby, teaching is mostly learnt by doing. At HBS I have found a community of distinguished professionals, who put teaching at the center of their interests and the do teach how to teach. Joining their CPCL faculty program was a great decision: I have accelerated my learning about teaching and changing people in terms of their knowledge, their skills and their mindset.
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Mastering whichever ability takes time, practice, dedication, plateaus and failures. Q-Labs, my lab, is my marketplace, my platform, my clinic, where I serve, teach, advise, undertake, administrate.
Each experience lead me an inch closer to my mission: help people to improve their performances. At ESCP Europe I serve as a full faculty member Professor, teaching Strategy, Family Business, Leadership and Problem Solving. Q-Labs is my professional "shopfloor", for serving business clients and institutions with keynote speeches, workshops, consulting or teaching. One foot in the academy and one foot in the business arena keeps nurturing my distintive capability of Action Professor, a bridge between academic knowledge and business real challenges. |