Katarzyna Sikora-Smets · systems diagnosis + coaching
Firefighting is not a character trait. It’s a symptom.
I help leaders stuck in firefighting mode understand how their organisation actually works — and reshape it so that problems surface early. When I leave, the capability stays.
Does any of this sound like your week?
These are the three situations I am most often called into. They look like different problems, but they are usually the same problem.
Your calendar is status meetings
The timeline keeps slipping, the same issues return in a different form, and you still cannot tell where the real problem lies. So you step in and fix it yourself. Again.
Nothing stuck
Six months after the consultants left, the old habits were back. Now nobody in the organisation wants to hear the word “transformation” again, yet you have to ask for budget for a second attempt.
Two camps, one leadership team
The same words mean different things to each side. From the outside, it can look like bad faith. It almost never is — but neither will it resolve itself.
What I bring into the room
I don’t choose between diagnosis and coaching.
Most providers in this market do one or the other. One person analyses your system and hands you a deck. Another coaches your people without ever addressing the structure they work in. Both approaches matter, but neither works alone.
The work requires both, usually in the same conversation. I map how work actually flows while working with the person who needs to change how they lead. That combination is central to what I do.
- Systems diagnosis
- Coaching
- Change that stays
Three ways to work together
Start small if you want to see how I work. Start with the diagnostic if you need to understand what you are dealing with before committing budget.
Leader shadowing
Around 16 hours spread across your calendar over a month. I sit in your meetings, observe how you work, and then discuss what I saw with you. No assessment, no report to HR, and no entry on your record.
Team diagnostic
Two to three weeks with the team, followed by a written report covering what I observed, what is at risk and what to address first. This is not a three-day round of interviews. The report is yours to use, with or without me.
Embedded partnership
Over several weeks or months, we build the change with your people rather than for them. I deliberately hand over control, and we agree from the outset how we will know when it is time for me to step away.
I make the case with data, not conviction
Much of this profession runs on opinion. I work from what the system actually records, then check whether that record matches what people say happens.
How long work really takes
I analyse cycle time as a distribution, not an average. The median tells you very little; the long tail is where credibility with stakeholders quietly erodes.
What was promised versus what shipped
Quarter over quarter, by team, including work added after the plan was finalised. Plan churn is usually the metric nobody has examined.
Where support changes the outcome
I compare teams receiving hands-on support with those without it, using the same metric in the same quarter. It is the only honest way to determine whether the intervention made a difference.
I share specific figures from previous engagements in conversation rather than publishing them — client data remains client data. Ask me during a call, and I will walk you through what changed and over what period.
Latest writing
I write about the patterns I keep encountering. These are not frameworks invented for the occasion; they are the patterns that repeatedly show up in the room.
The years I read as my own failure were data
Four assignments that could not have worked, what they had in common, and the point at which I stopped seeing the pattern as a personal failure.
Read the piece →
Your change will stall exactly where the leader stops
Organisations improve to the level of the person leading them, then plateau. Why that ceiling is so consistent, and what actually raises it.
Read the piece →
The six things I look at before I have an opinion
Every diagnostic I conduct examines the same six dimensions. It is not a maturity score, but a description of how work moves, where it stalls and what that costs.
Read the piece →“Kasia is great at spotting the gap, highlighting it to the whole audience, and working with them to extract a solution.”
Team member · 360 review, 2022
I turn work down. Here is when.
This is not a filter designed to make the offer look exclusive. These are simply the conditions the work needs if it is to survive.
- Nobody owns the issue. If you cannot name the person responsible, that is your answer.
- The owner has no mandate. Someone who can only escalate cannot change how work happens. We would produce a good report, but nothing more.
- “Just fix the team.” If the leadership part of the picture is off the table before we begin, I am not the right person.
If any of this sounds like your Monday, my inbox is open.
Thirty minutes, five questions and no pitch. If I am not the right person for your situation, I will say so and point you towards someone better suited to help.