Decision advisory firm · Valais and Geneva
Decision is a craft.
CIABATTI is a decision advisory firm based in Valais and Geneva, Switzerland. We help executives decide with method when information is incomplete, time is short and the decision commits.
The questions the accounts never ask.
An executive asks them every week, and nobody around him answers them any more. The firm is paid to say what the executive's entourage no longer says.
- 01
Can I hire, and on what condition?
- 02
What happens if I lose this client?
- 03
This manager who no longer delivers: do I replace him, or rebuild around him?
- 04
To whom do I hand over, when, and at what cost to the company?
- 05
Is what my advisor tells me what he knows, what he assumes, or what he has an interest in making me believe?
Five kinds of decision, one craft.
The firm works with executives and owners of companies of a few dozen to a few hundred people, with boards, and with institutions. Every engagement falls into one of these five categories: they are decisions, not company functions. And every engagement is led by the person who signs the proposal, from the first conversation to the debrief; there is no pyramid, no junior, no handover of the file.
Investing and setting direction
A major investment, a diversification, entering or leaving a market, a partnership. The deliverable is a chosen option, its conditions and its breaking points.
Learn moreOrganising and leading change
Reorganising, merging teams, carrying a transformation through without losing middle management on the way.
Learn moreGoverning and handing over
Making a board work, arbitrating between partners or within an owning family, preparing a succession.
Learn moreSteering by the figures
What the accounts say about margins, clients and dependencies, and what they foreshadow. The executive's dashboard, not the controller's.
Learn moreDeciding about people
Hiring or replacing a key manager, composing the executive committee, delegating, settling a difficult individual situation.
Learn moreAnd in every case
Separating what is known from what is assumed and from what is asserted out of interest. This is the firm's cross-cutting skill, described in the approach.
Read the approach
What we have written and defended in public.
No unverifiable figures, no anonymous testimonials. Public work you can read and judge, and five typical situations that show how the firm works.
- BookIntelligence Stratégique
The approach set out in this book is the one that structures every engagement of the firm. Published in French.
- NewsletterLe métier de décider
A French-language series on LinkedIn, where each edition starts from a real situation and ends with a rule of conduct.
- SpeakingKeynotes, masterclasses, seminars
For executive committees, boards and professional associations, in French and English.
The decision instruction, in four steps.
The same discipline applies to an investment decision, a reorganisation or the replacement of a key manager. The material changes; the rigour never does.
Frame
State the decision to be made, what it commits, and what we refuse to decide at the same time.
Establish
Separate facts, assumptions and interested claims. Name what is not known.
Build
Two or three real options, each with its conditions for success and its breaking points.
Decide and hold
Decide, say why, and prepare the explanation the decision will have to withstand.
The founder
Mike Ciabatti has spent some fifteen years in positions where one decides with incomplete information and teams to lead: general management of a services company, training of managers, militia service in the Swiss Armed Forces, advisory work for executives and institutions. Author of Intelligence Stratégique, he has made decision-making under uncertainty the sole object of his work.
Describe the situation in three questions.
You receive a direct reply from Mike Ciabatti, with no intermediary.