Strategist

I work as a strategist. What I do involves creating brand frameworks, essentially a culture model for an organisation. A system of symbols.

We start from the people — individually and as a community, who run and work in the organisation — to establish common ground in terms of beliefs, values, vision, objectives, mission, behaviours etc.

This works well in organisations who want clarify what makes them special and align people towards common goals — nurturing a culture from their values and fostering behaviours which help them deliver positive experiences to their audiences and customers.

My cousin Fabrizio was working as the CEO of an hotel group. With his board they had been thinking about the need for developing their brand, and he asked me to have a chat about it. After an hour in which I mainly asked him questions, he stated: “now I get what you do — you are like a therapist for organisations.”

Brand strategy as I practice it is indeed an approach akin to a form of collective psychotherapy. We help groups of people them make sense of their thoughts, feelings and behaviour to find balance.

The outcome is a system of symbols that provides the scaffolding to a collective identity project.