Konrad
Kozik

Independent Non-Executive Director·Strategic Advisor

What we tell ourselves shapes what we build. The most important work in boardrooms is learning to see the story clearly enough to change it. I help leaders and organisations do exactly that.

Get in touch ↓
About

Who I am

After over 25 years inside financial institutions, most people leave with a deep understanding of how they work. I did too. But I also learned something else: the stories we tell ourselves, in institutions, in careers, and in life, can be more powerful than any balance sheet. At some point, the leader faces a harder question: not what to change, but what story is making change so difficult.

I serve on boards and advise CEOs. The breakthroughs I have seen, in performance, in alignment, and in value creation, never came from better plans alone. They came when leaders changed the story they were operating from. See the story clearly enough, and the path to radical change becomes visible. That is the work I do.

What I do

Two areas of work

Twenty-five years across financial institutions and fintech, including periods of crisis in Central and Eastern Europe and in Western Europe, have given me an unusual combination of operational depth, judgement, and perspective. I bring all three to the table, candidly and without compromise.

Board

I serve as an independent non-executive director on boards where a material shift is needed, whether in strategy, governance, or direction of growth.

Advisory

I advise CEOs, investors, and institutions through three focused engagements: The Hundred Days, The Standing Brief, and Change Readiness.

Selected experience
UniCredit
Bank Pekao
Allianz
Roland Berger
PwC
Booz Allen Hamilton
KBC
maib
Deutsche Bank
Intesa Sanpaolo
UniCredit
Bank Pekao
Allianz
Roland Berger
PwC
Booz Allen Hamilton
KBC
maib
Deutsche Bank
Intesa Sanpaolo
What others say

Selected voices

Selected voices: coming soon.

Board

In the boardroom

I serve as an independent non-executive director on boards where something material is at stake. My role is to bring clarity, challenge assumptions, and ensure that the decisions made in the room are built on radical honesty. As an independent director, I feel the full weight of responsibility to represent all stakeholders.

Available for new mandates in financial services, fintech, and adjacent sectors across Europe and the Middle East.

Advisory

Three ways to work together

For CEOs

01
The Hundred Days
A focused, structured 100-day engagement for leaders stepping into new roles

A new role is not an arrival. It is the beginning of a journey for which no one is fully prepared. You know it; others know it too, and you can see it in the way they watch you and speak to you. The title may be new, but the real work is becoming the leader this moment requires. That calls for more than a plan. It requires a fundamental shift in the story you intend to create. That shift can be difficult and, at times, painful. By day 100: a clear direction, a plan in motion, and a 360-degree leadership framework ready to guide what comes next.

02
The Standing Brief
An ongoing senior advisory relationship

An ongoing advisory relationship with an agreed rhythm and access when the situation demands it. A highly experienced partner who knows your context, follows it over time, and understands what is at stake. Not a consultant who delivers recommendations and leaves, but someone who shares responsibility for the outcome and stays involved in execution, not only in shaping the answer. For CEOs who want a partner genuinely invested in their success.

For Organisations

03
Change Readiness
An organisational readiness workshop

For decades, organisations asked employees to believe in a shared story: a common purpose, shared values, mutual loyalty, and the company as a family. That story helped organisations hold together and create value. It is now breaking down, as both sides find it increasingly difficult to uphold the implicit bargain on which it rested. What comes next is not an adjustment but a fundamental shift. Yet most organisations skip the essential first step: people cannot be trained for a reality they are not ready to enter.

Before new skills can take hold, people need to understand how they themselves must change: how they think, the story they tell themselves, and the way they see what lies ahead. Only then can they enter the new reality deliberately rather than be overtaken by it.

This work is not optional. It requires investment, leadership, and honesty. Too often, leaders avoid that responsibility. I help organisations confront it before delay becomes more costly than change.

Speaking

On stage

Some ideas are too important to leave in a book.

I speak where institutional life, personal change, and the stories that shape both meet. My work is most relevant when something real is at stake: a leadership transition, an organisational transformation, or a board navigating crisis and uncertainty.

Three topics I return to most

The wrong story

How institutions and the people inside them become trapped in narratives that once served them but no longer do, and what it takes to change them.

The first hundred days

Why a new leadership role is not an arrival but a beginning, and what determines whether that beginning becomes something worth building on.

Change readiness

Why organisations achieve better results when they prepare people for change before training them for it, and what that preparation looks like in practice.

I speak in English, Polish, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.

Enquire about speaking →
In conversation

On camera

CEO transition
On stepping into the CEO role: why the first 100 days begin with the story you tell
Coming soon · ~3 min
Corporate change
On organisational change: why readiness must come before training
Coming soon · ~3 min
Writing

On the page

I am working on my first book about the stories we live inside and what becomes possible when we learn to recognise them.

Contact

Get in touch

For board appointments, advisory engagements, or speaking enquiries, please contact me directly.

office@konradkozik.com