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🔭 Business Strategist helping all-size companies with their GROWTH Strategy
🚀 Boosted 16+ multinationals and 10+ start-ups across EMEA
👇 Explore more on giammarcorizzo.com

24/09/2026

Corporations have a bad reputation right now: soul-draining, rigid, a place you fit into rather than grow in.

Coming back to one after five years freelance, I found the opposite. Here’s what I actually got from it, by career stage.

Junior: proximity to people you’d never otherwise learn from.
Sitting in the room while someone senior runs a meeting, handles a difficult stakeholder or manages a team under pressure teaches you things no course does. It’s micro-learning by watching, and it’s the first thing you lose working remotely.

Mid-level: exposure to process at scale.
Corporations show you what structure actually looks like: the difference between a startup improvising as it goes and an organisation that has refined how something should be done. The bigger the company, the more established the best practices. Watching how they operate gives you a standard you can take anywhere.

Senior: the resources to actually execute.
As a freelancer, you’re constrained by what one person can do alone. In a corporation, you get budget, a team and infrastructure behind an idea, the ability to build at a scale no individual could pull off solo.

The lesson:
Corporations aren’t the enemy of growth people make them out to be. What they offer changes by career stage: access early on, process in the middle, and scale once you’re senior enough to use it.

Save this if you’ve ever dismissed corporate as the safe choice.

Dismissing corporate too quickly or staying in it too long: which is YOUR weakness?

New here? I’m Giammarco. Follow for what I learn about leadership, strategy and getting to the top in the age of non-linear careers.

22/09/2026

What freelancing taught me that I still use in corporate.

Now that I’m back in corporate, three habits from freelancing came with me:

1. Stay entrepreneurial
As a freelancer, you constantly track what the market wants and shape your offering around it, or you don’t get hired. In corporate, the stakeholders are internal instead of external, but the discipline is identical. I stay on top of what’s changing in the industry and shape our offerings around it, not around what worked last year.
Why this works: the market doesn’t wait for you to catch up. Neither do internal stakeholders.

2. Treat every relationship as a future opportunity
As a freelancer, I never knew where my next project would come from, so I invested in every relationship, not just the ones paying me today. I bring that into corporate life: understanding what someone is actually working towards, not just what they need from me this week, is what turns a conversation into the next opportunity to work together.
Why this works: relationships built only around immediate needs don’t survive past the immediate need.

3. Don’t let your experience become a ceiling
Freelancing taught me the hard way that once you’re known for one thing, clients stop hiring you for anything else. That’s exactly what stalled my growth. Now I push for projects I haven’t done before, not just the ones I know I’m good at.
Why this works: the fastest way to stop growing is to only get hired for what you’ve already proven.

The lesson:
Freelancing builds habits corporate roles rarely teach: staying market-aware, investing in relationships before you need them, and refusing to get boxed in by what you’ve already proven. You don’t need to freelance to build these. Start now.

Save this if you’ve ever felt boxed into the thing you’re known for.

Staying too safe in your proven strengths or chasing too many new things: which is YOUR weakness?

New here? I’m Giammarco. Follow for what I learn about leadership, strategy and getting to the top in the age of non-linear careers.

21/09/2026

EY is awarding $100m in bonus to those who,
in the age of AI, can demonstrate those skills that make us human

Judgment. Critical thinking. Adaptability. Collaboration.

Here are the 3 key lessons from how IKEA deployed AI in an intelligent manner:

Step 1: Automate the routine
In 2021, IKEA launched an AI assistant called Billie. It handled roughly half of customer questions: store hours, parcel tracking, product availability.
Why this works: people shouldn’t be the search engine for answers already on the website.

Step 2: Study what the AI can’t solve
The other 43-53% were complex. Customers wanted help with home and interior design.
Why this works: what the bot fails at shows you where human value sits.

Step 3: Retrain, don’t cut
IKEA retrained 8,500 customer service agents as remote interior design consultants.
Why this works: no severance bill, no hit to morale or brand, and people move from answering opening times to advising on design.

Cost lens: AI handles half the queries, so cut half the team.
Value lens: AI handles half the queries, so what can the team do that’s worth more?

The lesson:
AI is more than a cost-cutting tool. The smartest companies use it to move people up the value chain.
1. Automate what’s easy to find
2. Study what the machine can’t solve
3. Retrain people towards it

Save this if you’re leading a team through AI change.

Cost-cutting or upskilling: which is YOUR company’s weakness?

New here? I’m Giammarco. Follow for what I learn about leadership, strategy and getting to the top in the age of non-linear careers.

18/09/2026

Last week I was asked to summarise a 40-slide deck with our 2027 strategy into one page for our global townhall.

I can’t go into the details of that deck. But I can share the approach.

The first thing I did was run it through our company-approved AI tool to get a summary. The result was below expectations — it gave weight to details that didn’t matter, and missed the things that did.

So here’s what I actually did. Before writing a word, I evaluated three things.

1. Audience

In the deck, the reader was the ExCo — people who already knew the context, the numbers behind the numbers, the internal debate.

In the townhall, the reader was everyone — a newbie three weeks into the company and a veteran of fifteen years, sitting in the same room, needing to walk out aligned to the same objective.

I stripped anything that only made sense to someone who’d already lived the last six months of strategy discussions.

Why this works: the AI tool didn’t know who was receiving the message. It treated every slide as equally important.

I didn’t — I wrote for the person with the least context, because if they get it, everyone does.

2. Purpose

The deck’s purpose was to justify a plan. The townhall’s purpose was different: what does a first-week hire and a fifteen-year veteran both need to know to pull in the same direction?

Not here’s everything we decided. Just — here’s where the industry is moving, and here’s how we’re responding.

Why this works: purpose decides what gets cut. Once I knew the one-page had to align, not justify, half the deck became irrelevant on its own.

3. Time

The deck was built for a one-hour discussion. I had two minutes.

Two minutes doesn’t allow for nuance. It allows for one feeling: urgency. So I made it punchy and aspirational — and I made sure it said, clearly, our competitors are not standing still.
Why this works: when time is this compressed, tone carries as much weight as content. A flat summary in two minutes gets forgotten. An urgent one gets remembered.
The lesson:

AI can compress information. It can’t decide what matters to a specific reader, for a specific reason, in a specific amount of

17/09/2026

Eleven months ago, I moved back to London having to rebuild almost everything at once. A job, a flat, a social life. Most of the friends I’d had here before had moved on in the five years I’d been away.

For a long time, how’s the move going got a version of the answer I thought people wanted. Good, busy, exciting. All technically true. None of it was the actual answer.

The actual answer, for the first six or seven months, was that I was mostly proving myself. Proving I could still do the job after five years of running my own thing. Proving I was worth including in the room, not just invited to it. Proving, quietly, to myself, that leaving a life I’d built on purpose was the right call, on a timeline that didn’t give me any evidence either way yet.

I don’t think I noticed the shift when it happened. There wasn’t a single week where it flipped. But somewhere in the last couple of months, how’s the move going stopped needing the curated answer. I started actually meaning good.

Not because everything resolved. I still don’t know if I’d do it again, and I’m not sure that question ever fully closes. But the daily experience changed from performing competence to just having it, most days, without needing to check.

That’s probably the actual lesson, if there is one. I didn’t move because I was certain it was right. I moved because I’d run out of ways to find out without doing it. You don’t always get to know a decision is right before you make it. Sometimes the only way to find out is to make the call, and then spend the months after making it right.

If you’re early into a version of this, the proving-yourself phase, I don’t think there’s a shortcut through it. I think it just has a length, and you find out you’re through it by noticing, months later, that you stopped counting.

—

16/09/2026

I’ve worked with 20+ C-Suite executives in the last 2 years.

One trait shows up in every single one:

Comfort with being uncomfortable

Not “confidence.” Not “charisma.” Not “intelligence.”

Comfort with discomfort.

What this looks like:

→ Presenting a strategy you’re not 100% sure about (because waiting for certainty means never moving)

→ Making decisions with incomplete information (because perfect information never arrives)

→ Admitting “I don’t know” in a room full of people who expect you to know everything

→ Adapting when the plan changes mid-execution (because it always does)

→ Living with imposter syndrome while making million-dollar decisions anyway

The people who stall out before C-Suite?

They wait for certainty. They need to feel “ready.” They avoid discomfort.

The people who make it?

They act despite uncertainty. They learn through doing. They lean into discomfort.

Kind reminder:

If you’re uncomfortable, you’re probably growing.

If you’re comfortable, you’re probably stagnating.

The path to C-Suite isn’t about avoiding discomfort. It’s about building tolerance for it.

Save this if you’re aiming higher 👆

What’s the most uncomfortable thing you did for your career? 👇

—

14/09/2026

Your to-do list doesn’t need more hours. It needs a filter.

Do these three things before anything goes on it:

1. Run the Ownership Test

Ask: Is this actually mine to solve?

Not can I help. Should I be the one doing it.

Most things that land on a senior desk aren’t decisions about the work. They’re decisions about who should be doing it. If it’s not yours, redirect it before it becomes yours by default.

2. Run the Compounding Test

Ask: Does this get easier or harder if I ignore it for two weeks?

Some things rot without you. Some things resolve themselves. The instinct to chase everything immediately usually costs more time than it saves.

Separate urgent from imp
ortant with one question, not a gut feeling.

3. Run the Regret Test

Ask: If I never did this, what would actually go wrong?

Not what could go wrong in theory. What would, specifically, break.

Most unfinished tasks survive being unfinished indefinitely. This question exposes the handful that genuinely don’t.

The lesson:

A senior job isn’t protected by doing more. It’s protected by a fast, repeatable filter for what doesn’t need you at all.

Ownership. Compounding. Regret. Run all three before anything earns a spot on your list.

Save this if your to-do list needs a filter, not more hours

Adding too much to your list or letting nothing go: which is YOUR weakness?

—

11/09/2026

Everyone treats January as the moment to reset. I stopped, after watching my CEO run September differently, two years running.

Here’s how I plan the year now, in the first week of September:

1. I kill one thing before I plan anything new

Before I let myself add a new priority, I ask what’s still on my list that shouldn’t be. Not what’s behind schedule. What’s technically still alive but I don’t actually believe in anymore.

Why this works: most annual plans only add. Nothing gets removed, so priority lists get longer and weaker every year. Killing something first makes room for the next twelve months to actually mean something.

2. I review the year against three months, not twelve

I don’t ask what’s happened since January anymore. I ask what changed in the last quarter specifically, because that’s the window that’s actually still relevant to how I plan forward.

Why this works: a twelve month review flatters you with distance. A three month review tells you the truth about where things stand right now.

3. I write down what I’d tell someone new in my seat

Not a strategy document. One page: here’s what I now know that I didn’t in January. If someone started in my role tomorrow, this is what would save them six months.

Why this works: forcing the update into writing exposes what I’ve actually learned, versus what I’ve just been repeating out of habit.

The lesson:

January gets treated like the reset because the calendar says so. I learned from watching my CEO that September is when the year is real enough to actually plan against. You’ve lived through enough of it to know what’s true and what was just optimism in January.

Bonus point: planning in September makes you treat the Christmas break as a true break and a checkpoint, relieving you from the pressures of the New Year’s propositions

Save this if you’re about to plan the next twelve months

Killing what isn’t working or waiting to see if it turns around: which is YOUR habit?

—

07/08/2026

I used to think Chief of Staff and Strategy roles were basically the same job with a different title.

They’re not. Here’s the actual difference:

Part 1: Who the work serves

A Chief of Staff role serves a person. Every priority gets filtered through what one specific leader needs this week.

A strategy role serves a direction. The work is about where the whole organisation is heading, not what’s on one person’s calendar.

Why this matters: If you’re deciding between the two, ask whether you want to be excellent at reading one person, or excellent at reading a market.

Part 2: The time horizon

Chief of Staff work is mostly this week and next week. Meetings, decisions, follow-through, urgency.

Strategy work means holding a long-term vision and making the decisions today that actually get you there.

Why this matters: People burn out moving from one to the other without adjusting their expectation of feedback speed. A good strategy decision can look invisible for a long time.

Part 3: What good looks like

In a Chief of Staff role, good looks like nothing going wrong. The best weeks are the ones nobody notices.

In a strategy role, good looks like something changing direction because of you. The best work is visible, eventually, even if it’s slow to land.

Why this matters: If you need regular, visible proof that your work matters, strategy roles ask you to sit with a lot of ambiguity before that proof shows up.

The lesson:

Both roles sit close to power. Neither is more senior than the other. They just ask for a completely different relationship with time, visibility, and whose priorities you’re actually serving.

Know which one you’re built for before you chase the title.

Save this if you’re mapping your own path between the two

Craving visible wins or comfortable with invisible ones: which is YOUR pattern?

—

30/07/2026

I used to think the hard part of this role would be the hours.

It isn’t. The hard part is what you’re not allowed to say.

Here’s what nobody tells you about that:

Part 1: You know things before anyone else does

Big changes. Numbers that haven’t been announced. You sit in the room when it becomes real, weeks before it becomes public.

You go home. Someone asks how work was. You say fine.

Why this is hard: You’re not lying, but you’re not being honest either. You just get used to living slightly sideways of the truth.

Part 2: You can’t explain your own decisions

Sometimes you have to change a plan, cancel a meeting, or shift priorities and you can’t say why. Not because you don’t trust people. Because it isn’t yours to say yet.

People read that as you being difficult, or political, or vague.

Why this is hard: You take the reputational hit for discretion, and discretion never explains itself.

Part 3: You carry it alone until you don’t have to anymore

There’s a specific kind of tired that comes from holding something significant with nobody to put it down with. Not stress exactly. More like weight.

Then one day it’s announced, and suddenly everyone can talk about it except you’re already three weeks past needing to.

Why this is hard: The relief never lands at the same time as everyone else’s reaction. You process it early and alone, then watch the room catch up.

The lesson:

Nobody warns you that proximity to power means proximity to silence. You get access to everything and permission to talk about almost none of it.

That’s the actual cost of the seat. Not the hours. The quiet.

Save this if you’ve ever had to sit on something you couldn’t say

Carrying it alone or oversharing to relieve the weight: which is YOUR pattern?

—

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