Growth Advisory for CEOs and leadership teams — more than business coaching.
Growth that no longer rests on you alone.
Solid numbers — and still standstill. That’s the growth trap. Four patterns you may recognise — all four solvable.
Your company reacts more than it acts. The symptoms are visible – the cause isn’t. We make it measurable.
Good teams. Plenty of calls. And still leaders work more against than with each other, even when they don’t mean to.
Your strategy is convincing – but it never lands in the everyday. No one could explain it in 60 seconds.
Everyone acts in good faith. Just not on the levers that truly count. Focus becomes an empty word.
More isn’t growth. Growth sharpens — wiser, more connected, more grown up.
It compounds. It connects. It carries. For managing directors whose growth wants to mature — not for those who only want to go faster.
One page. One plan. The whole team.
Specific enough to decide on — compact enough to hold in your head.
Share of companies with a sustainable growth trajectory rose from 15% to 65%.
CEOs report substantially reduced stress levels. 40% moderate improvement.
97% better personal productivity, 96% better team productivity.
Source: from over 50 supported Mittelstand and scale-up engagements, as of 2026. Full study on request.
Sparring as a partner, clear questions, a protected space for decisions.
Alignment on priorities, a rhythm that holds, accountability made visible.
Strategy becomes behaviour. Behaviour becomes growth.
From a focused one-day sprint to a 12-month engagement. Choose by pace, your own input and depth of impact – not by budget.
One day, one topic, one result — from the AI Compass to the growth plan.
The fastest way to work with us. 02 — PersonalDirect 1:1 support with Olaf Sell or Georg von Laffert.
Sparring at decision level, confidential. 03 — In exchangePeer groups for CEOs and co-founders. Curated, confidential, regular.
Other CEOs as sparring — Klartext, not consensus. 04 — SupportedIn-house program for leadership teams over several months.
A Growth Advisor at your side.Not sure which path fits you? That’s what the discovery call is for.
Book a discovery call→Five voices, several quarters to several years on. Not reviews — what actually changed in how they lead. Quotes translated from German.
“More freedom and happier people. Georg has worked as an advisor with our leaders since 2015, building a high-performance team. Together we managed to define our strategy clearly and concisely and to spread responsibility across many shoulders. For me personally, the biggest impact was gaining far more freedom — and being able to enjoy my holidays again without calls and emails.”
01 / Advised since 2015
Peter Schröder
Managing Director, Elanity GmbH
“Olaf has been with us for several years. In that time we grew from €74m to over €120m. We rebuilt our leadership team and gave the company a new sense of direction. We now treat strategy work as a process. He keeps us on our growth path — and holds us accountable. With Olaf’s help we have a true growth companion at our side, one who makes it possible to work on strategy with the entire leadership team.”
02 / A multi-year engagement
Eckhard Koehn
CEO
“Georg is a great help to us in scaling ottonova and putting processes and structures in place. His empathetic manner and exceptional commitment help us enormously to ensure alignment within a very heterogeneous organisation and to keep our focus on what matters. We can wholeheartedly recommend the structured approach and working with the proven framework.”
03 / Growth Program
Michael Karb
CFO, ottonova
“The workshop with Georg and Olaf helped us enormously in the early phase of decision-making. The structured tasks and the wealth of experience they brought in showed us clearly which path to take to turn a rigid divisional structure into an agile organisation in the real-estate sector. We’re going through this change process right now, with great success.”
04 / Leadership Sprint
Richard Weller
Managing Director, Alpha IC
“Whenever we worked with Olaf, he managed to get us to ask ourselves the relevant questions. He helped us shift our perspective and supported us in finding the actionable insights we were looking for. And perhaps most importantly: we had a lot of fun doing it.”
05 / CEO Sparring
Dr. Max Gulde
CEO & Co-Founder, ConstellR
We believe growth doesn’t fail on ideas, but on alignment and execution in the leadership team – and the next stage begins with the entrepreneur. That conviction comes from 15+ years with European Mittelstand and family businesses. Today we put it to work with the Mittelstand and scale-ups.
15+ years of strategy and growth support in European Mittelstand companies and scale-ups. Focus: translating strategy into the everyday.
Forester, entrepreneur and Growth Advisor. Guides leadership teams between strategic clarity and hard execution.
What CEOs and managing directors typically want to know before investing 30 minutes in a discovery call.
The One Page Growth Plan turns your strategy into a single page your leadership team grasps in one morning and carries for a whole quarter. It consists of four elements: a shared target picture, three differentiating levers, three quarterly priorities and clear ownership.
Growth Advisory is strategy and growth support for CEOs and leadership teams in growth or transformation phases. Unlike classic strategy consulting, we don’t deliver slide decks — we work as outside sparring alongside your team, until strategy measurably lands in the everyday and a workable quarterly rhythm takes hold.
Four main formats for different phases. The Growth Program is the structural support over 100 days or 12 months for a leadership team. Growth Circles are curated peer groups where managing directors work real growth topics in sparring every 4–8 weeks. Workshops are compact in-house formats for one concrete question — strategy, growth plan, AI Compass or leadership-team alignment. CEO Sparring is direct 1:1 support with Olaf Sell or Georg von Laffert. Details on the respective program pages.
30 minutes in which we assess your current situation — and you assess ours. You leave with three prioritised growth levers, an honest take on whether our support fits, and a clear next step — even if we never speak again.
Right: for ambitious CEOs in scale-ups and the Mittelstand who want to build growth that holds and are ready to actively involve their leadership team. Not a fit: if you’re looking for a classic McKinsey audit, need a quick restructuring, or, as a CEO, don’t want to take an active part yourself.
First visible effects typically after 4–6 weeks — usually clearer decisions and fewer redundant meetings. Strategic impact (market position, business-model shifts) takes 2–4 quarters. We set measurement checkpoints early, so after each sprint you see what has moved.
A 30-minute discovery call. You leave it with (1) three prioritised growth levers, (2) an honest take on whether our support fits, (3) a clear next step — even if we never speak again.
Book a discovery call →
