Three Master’s Degrees Later: Strategic Thinking Development from Classical Guitarist to Chief Product Officer

Thirty years. That’s the time required to build something truly distinctive in executive leadership development.
Most consultants rely on frameworks drawn from textbooks or business school case studies. My approach is different: cognitive capabilities developed through systematic preparation across three disciplines—classical music performance, cultural management, and C-level digital leadership.
This was not accidental. It was intentional preparation for a methodology that delivers strategic clarity in complex environments.
From interpreting orchestral scores at Cologne’s University of Music to navigating digital transformation at XING and Nokia, discover how pattern recognition and structural awareness transfer from artistic training to executive decision-making effectiveness.

When academia knocked on my door in mid-2025 with feedback on my research proposal—”This is kind of intriguing”—I knew exactly what they meant: We don’t quite know what to do with this, but please keep talking.
That awkward compliment captures something profound about leadership development today.
Business school professors craft elegant models. Executives make decisions at 3 AM with partial information and teams one Slack message away from mutiny. Both worlds matter. Neither speaks the other’s language.
At DERTOUR, I once faced customer data so messy that academics called it “chaotic results.” To me, it looked like a musical score without notation. What happened next revealed why the gap between theory and practice isn’t just annoying—it’s expensive.
Here’s what happens when someone who’s lived in both worlds decides to bridge them systematically.

The best leadership school I ever attended wasn’t a business school. It was the music conservatory—though I didn’t realize it at the time.
After 20+ years in C-level roles at XING, Nokia, and REWE Group, I’ve realized something striking: the cognitive processes that make classical musicians extraordinary are exactly what today’s executives are missing.
Executives are trained to think in frameworks. Musicians are trained to think in patterns. Which do you think is more useful in a world of chaos?
My unique combination of classical music training, decades of executive experience, and planned PhD research reveals insights invisible from any single perspective. This isn’t theoretical speculation—it’s the first empirical study examining how musical cognitive processes enhance strategic decision-making in digital business environments.
Leadership isn’t short of frameworks. It’s short of cognitive enhancement.
This is the conversation I’m building my consultancy around—and I’d love for you to be part of it.

In spring 2025, a colleague asked me a simple question: “Why aren’t you using your musical skills to improve your leadership?” I smiled politely, but the question haunted me. He was right. I had been using my musical training for years—just not consciously. The way I spotted patterns before they emerged in data. My instinctive sense of timing in transformation initiatives. The ability to understand the “architecture” behind complex problems. These weren’t personality quirks. They were cognitive habits shaped through decades of classical guitar training, long before my executive career began. That offhand question opened a door I hadn’t realized was there—and set me on the path from the HEC Paris Executive MBA to doctoral research at 57.

Why settle for anecdotal leadership advice? Bridge the gap between boardroom reality and academic rigor with evidence-based strategies. As a practitioner-scholar with 20+ years of C-level experience , I apply a post-positivist lens to identify the objective, measurable mechanisms that might enhance executive effectiveness

“Why pursue a PhD at a business school instead of a traditional university?” That question followed me through months of research and interviews across Europe. My answer: because the real world needs both rigour and relevance. Traditional doctoral programmes prioritise theory over practice—but if insights stay locked in academic journals, how do they help leaders facing today’s digital challenges? That’s why I chose Antwerp Management School’s Executive PhD…

I’ve made a radical decision: no more masks in business.

The corporate world taught me to suppress feelings, harmonize instead of speaking truth, and prioritize data over intuition. But this false professionalism costs companies millions in missed opportunities and demotivated teams.

My breakthrough came through coaching and my lifelong passion for classical music. Like a conductor sensing the finest nuances in an orchestra, sensitive leaders feel the harmonies and dissonances in their teams. This artistic sensitivity isn’t weakness—it’s a competitive advantage.

Authenticity means trusting your feelings as precise sensors, bringing uncomfortable truths to the table, and giving emotions the space they deserve in decision-making. It’s the foundation for my consultancy “Leadership Artist” and my upcoming doctoral research.

I’m done pretending. Authenticity is my new superpower, and it will transform how I lead forever.

The Leadership Artist launches this November—a research-driven consultancy where academic insights meet business practice. Born from my Executive PhD research into how musical training enhances strategic leadership, it’s designed as a living lab where theory and practice inform each other. I didn’t want to wait four years to make an impact…

After two decades in management teams at XING, Nokia, and DERTOUR Group, I’ve seen leadership frameworks come and go—each promising transformation, few addressing what actually determines strategic performance in modern organisations.

Leadership development suffers from a structural blind spot: it focuses on behaviours and tools, while the real differentiator lies in how leaders process complexity.

This gap exists because neither academia nor consultancy systematically investigates the cognitive capabilities that enable exceptional strategic thinking—pattern recognition, temporal anticipation, interpretative discipline.

What if these capabilities could be trained through formal artistic methods? Not as metaphor, but as structured cognitive development?

This is the question at the heart of The Leadership Artist: exploring whether conservatory-level musical training can measurably enhance strategic leadership effectiveness. My PhD research, begun in October 2025 at Antwerp Management School, aims to establish the empirical foundation.