Unconventional Leadership Enthusiast | Creator and propagator of the "5E's of Leadership" | Empowering Leaders to Transform & Thrive in the Age of Change

When leaders face tough situations — turnarounds, post-acquisition chaos, leadership breakdowns, toxic culture, execution failures — they don’t need advice or frameworks.
They need someone who can step in, take ownership, and deliver results.

That’s what I do.

I bring 20+ years of senior HR and organizational leadership experience across EMEA, with 10+ large-scale transformation assignments. I embed with executive teams, stabilize situations fast (3–6 months), and build sustainable leadership and organizational capability over 12–18 months.

I work at the intersection of leadership, decision-making, and organizational systems — where strong individuals often struggle to operate as a coherent whole under pressure.

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Selected impact:

→ German manufacturing business in crisis
Leadership vacuum, toxic culture, massive talent exodus.
Turned €10M annual losses into breakeven within 12 months.

→ Three Italian plants operating as warring factions
No alignment, no shared priorities.
Built cross-plant leadership alignment; European product sales increased by ~25%.

→ Young leadership team blocked by entrenched resistance
Coached and supported them through a full transformation.
Order execution speed improved by 30%; complete business model turnaround within one year.

→ Severe labor availability crisis across Eastern Europe
Attrition reduced from 25% to 8%; seasonal staffing stabilized through leadership and HR mobilization.

→ Quality function collapse after global product recall
Rebuilt the function from scratch, replaced half of leadership.
All critical issues resolved within 12 months; quality records broken year after year since.

→ Commercial organization with toxic culture and recurring losses
Transformed into the fastest-growing commercial team in Europe within 18 months.

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How I work

Beyond classic interim leadership, I increasingly use facilitated business simulations to make leadership and decision-making dynamics visible under pressure.
They help executive teams see — within hours — patterns that often remain hidden in meetings for years.

This is not training and not theory.
It’s a way to surface how decisions interact, where responsibility concentrates or disappears, and why strong teams sometimes underperform as a system.

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Where I typically engage

• Crisis stabilization
• Post-acquisition integration
• Leadership transitions
• Culture and execution transformation

Scope: EMEA.

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Available for Interim CHRO / HR Director assignments and executive-level transformation work.
High travel is not an issue.


Mikhail Lvovskii

I've been pushed out of an organization before.

Not for underperforming.
But for being right, too loudly.

I called out the problems,uncomfortable truths about leadership and culture that everyone saw, but no one wanted to discuss out in the open.

Privately, every leader said, "You're right."
Publicly, they chose peace over progress.

A few months later, I was "reorganized out."

I was advised many times to learn how to "manage stakeholders".
The obvious lesson would be to stay quiet.

But that's not the lesson I learned.

Here's my real takeaway:
- Pick your battles, but never pretend the battle doesn't exist.
- Some organizations want to be fixed.
- Some just want to look like they're trying.

If you're the one who solves hard problems, learn to spot the difference early.
Your energy is too valuable to waste in places that only want the illusion of progress.

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Happy New 2006 Year to everyone!
Best wishes to you and your closed ones!

Certified Transformational Coach

Global Professional in Human Resources (GPHR)

Change Management. Level 4. Change Trainer.

Coaching for Performance. Train the Trainer

Continuous Improvement and Lean Management

EQ 360 degrees feed-back coach

Efficient methods of recruitment and headhunting

Electrolux Leader

Electrolux Next Level Leader

HR Academy

Job Evaluation: Mercer's methodology

People management skills

People management training. Train the trainer

Preparation to GPHR certification

Samsung Leadership program

StoreWars business simulation

Storytelling

Interim HR leadership and transformation execution for organizations facing crisis, transition, or underperformance.

Short- to mid-term Organizational interventions to the teams with dysfunctions, in order to build high the basis for high performance.

Selected projects:

Pharma (multinational, CEE) – Reset the top team, introduced ambitious visioning and planning cadence, strengthened collaboration → positioned business for accelerated market growth.

Global Electronics producer – Advised on HR operating model redesign, aligning service delivery with business strategy → increased ownership by line managers, freed HR from admin.

Industrial Plant (Germany/Poland border, 900 employees) – Installed accountability ladder and reset leadership culture → productivity lifted by 20% in 3 months.

Law Firm (Poland, 400 employees) – Partnered with new HR Director after failed engagement survey → leadership reset, trust rebuilt, attrition slowed within 6 months.

Founder and Principal Consultant

Helping companies overcome challenges in the area of people, leadership and culture.
Helping to run organizational transformation: design, implementation, change management.
Transforming HR organizations to be true business partners and move them towards business drivers.

Chief Transformational Officer

Built HR function from scratch for international logistics company: strategy through execution, all processes, leadership team across 15 countries.

Led three major turnaround initiatives:

German Entity Turnaround (2023-2024)
Situation: German manufacturing entity in crisis — leadership vacuum, toxic culture, talent exodus. Running consistent losses (-10M EUR annually) despite major technology investment.
Action: Led leadership and culture reset. Addressed talent crisis through targeted interventions. Aligned leadership team around performance recovery. Reviewed and streamlined key functional processes.
Result: From -10M EUR annual losses to breakeven within 1 year. Organization stabilized, leadership aligned, underperformers exited.

Italian Operations Integration (2023-2024)
Situation: Three Italian plants operating as warring factions — fighting internally and resisting collaboration with European operations.
Action: Drove cross-plant alignment initiatives. Broke down silos between Italian entities and broader European organization. Built collaborative leadership culture.
Result: Italian product sales in Europe increased ~25%. Unified operations, established productive collaboration. Refreshed Italian management at top 2 layers.

Lithuania Leadership Transition (2022-2024)
Situation: Young leadership team installed after leadership reset, struggling to drive change in entrenched old-guard organization.
Action: Coached and supported new leadership team through transformation. Helped build credibility and change capability. Addressed resistance, aligned organization around new direction.
Result: Orders execution speed improved 30%. Complete business model turnaround from imports to local production within 1 year. Annual growth 15%.

European operations sold to strategic buyer in 2024 following successful stabilization.

Chief Human Resources Officer

Progressive HR leadership across EMEA Industrial Operations, with four major turnaround/transformation cases:

Quality Function Crisis Recovery (2018-2019)
Situation: Global quality scandal — mass product recall (dishwashers) causing massive financial losses and reputational damage. Quality function neglected for years: incompetent team, weak culture, no credibility.
Action: Partnered with new Quality leader to rebuild from ground up. Replaced more than half of leadership team. Redefined function's mission. Recruited high-caliber talent. Coached leader through confidence gaps.
Result: All critical quality issues resolved within 12 months. Historical quality records broken every subsequent year. Function transformed from liability to competitive advantage.

East Europe Manufacturing Labor Crisis (2018-2019)
Situation: By season 2018: zero applications for seasonal workers, significant drop in permanent worker inflow. No one wanted to join Electrolux factories.
Action: Gathered EMEA Manufacturing leadership to develop comprehensive solution. Introduced migrant workers approach despite strong stakeholder resistance.
Result: Decreased workers' attrition from 25% to 8% within months. Employee engagement improved 22 percentage points in Eastern Europe. Season 2018 sdtafed fully. YoY productivity and OEE targets over-achieved for first time in Eastern Europe.

Supply Chain Centralization (2014-2016)
Situation: Major organizational restructuring — centralizing Supply Chain operations across EMEA. Experienced plant managers losing power. Strong resistance, lack of trust, leadership vacuum.
Action: Deployed as embedded change agent. Bridged gaps between central leadership and local plant management. Ensured functioning of new structure during transition.
Result: New centralized organization successfully established and operational. Achieved strategic targets for product delivery at improving cost. New SC organization gained trust and demonstrated advanced capabilities.

HR Director Industrial Operations EMEA (from 2019 - Europe)

Commercial Organization Turnaround
Situation: Dysfunctional commercial organization with toxic culture, chronic underperformance, consistent losses. Managing Director terminated in week two of my arrival.
Action: Kept business running for 4 months while assessing team. Personally removed most toxic individuals. Rebuilt leadership culture around accountability. Supported onboarding of new MD and completed organizational reset.
Result: Transformed from loss-making unit to fastest-growing commercial team in Europe. Delivered significant sales growth and profit turnaround within 18 months. Built self-steering team capable of sustaining performance.

Regional HR Director (CIS counties + Baltics)

HR leadership for industrial gas operations including oversight of two M&A integration projects. Managed complex stakeholder environment, aligned cultures and systems across acquired entities while maintaining operational stability.
Assured stable business functioning along severe Financial crisis of 2008-2009, forcing mass redudancies and business restructuring. While making sure 2 entities acquired pre-crisis were integrating into the business wihtout performance loss.

HR Director

Regional HR leadership across CIS markets for consumer electronics business.
Establishing HR system from scratch along shaping new Global region in CIS.

CIS Region HR Manager

Post-merger integration of Business Consulting practice into IBM structure. Aligning processes, leadership practices and culture.

HR Manager. Business Consulting Services department (integration project)

Recruitment and development support for the pilot project for the emerging business model of dedicated software development centres.

Recruitment Manager

Interim HR Director/CHRO | Turnaround & Transformation Specialist | I stabilize broken organizations and rebuild dysfunctional teams

English

German

Polish

Russian

SHRM

Interim HR Director/CHRO | Turnaround & Transformation Specialist | Helping leaders succeed when context is tough

A CEO once said, "I need you to fix my HR team."

I spent a week inside.

After watching how things really ran, I went back to him and said:

"Your HR team isn't broken. Your leadership team is. HR is just the mirror."

He didn't love that answer.

But here's what I saw:

- Leaders sidestepped HR, then blamed them for being out of the loop.

- Leaders made hiring decisions, then blamed HR when those hires didn't work.

- Leaders avoided hard conversations, then blamed HR for "cultural issues."

HR was doing exactly what leadership allowed.

If you want better HR, look in the mirror first.

Fix your leadership, and HR will follow.

Something uncomfortable hit me over the past 5 years.

I spent two decades chasing the classic playbook.
Big companies. Regional roles. Clear track. Predictable future.

Then I stepped off.

Not because I failed.
But because I saw how the game changes at the top.

The higher I climbed, the more political it got.
It became less about fixing real problems.
More about protecting seats and managing optics.

Turns out, I'm wired for turnarounds, not politics.

I want the calls that start with:
"Help. This is broken. We need to fix it."

Not the ones that end with:
"Let's schedule another alignment meeting."

So I tried consulting, coaching, training.
They were fine, but short-term. 
You show up, give advice, then politics and old habits creep right back in.

2025 taught me this:
I'm done playing in other people's games.

2026 will be about impact, not titles.
Real problems. Real turnarounds. Real change.

What did 2025 teach you?

My first turnaround almost broke me.

I was just over 30, full of ambition, convinced that if I just worked harder, I could fix anything.

The job was huge. Transform a fast-growing country into an independent region. Build everything from scratch. Change old habits, set up new processes.

Here's what I ran into:

- There was no real team, just job titles
- Managers agreed in meetings, then did whatever they wanted
- The culture valued hierarchy over common sense

So I did what most do. I worked long hours. Built impressive plans. Laid out all the change on paper.

Nothing moved.

The breakthrough didn't come from another plan. It came when I stopped talking and started listening.

Not the "HR listening" where you nod along and take notes.

Real listening. The kind where you're silent long enough to hear what people are afraid to say out loud.

That's when things started to shift.

Turnarounds don't start with strategy. They start with trust.

Trust starts with listening.

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Best HR advice I ever got? Came from a factory floor supervisor in Poland.

"You HR people love your processes. But my guys don't read your policies. They watch what happens when someone breaks them."

I was two weeks into a turnaround. I had a deck full of slides about culture transformation.

Nobody cared.

They didn't listen to my speeches. They watched what I did when the first line manager screamed at an employee.

They watched what happened when someone missed their targets.

They watched who got promoted. Who got sidelined.

And they watched if poor behavior was ignored, or if it had consequences.

Here's the truth: Culture isn't what you write down, or what you present.

It's what you tolerate.

The hardest job I ever had wasn't the turnaround.

It was what came after.

Manufacturing business, deep in trouble. It needed a reset, and we gave it one. Turned things around. Brought the company back to life.

Then the parent company dropped the next task: "Now keep it running."

I lasted 8 months. Not because I failed, but because I was bored out of my mind.

Building is one thing. Maintaining is another.

Some people are wired for steady-state. For stable operations. For the rhythms of routine.

That's not me.

You have to know what you're built for. Not just to prove you can hang on, but to focus where you make the most impact.

I'm built for the mess. Not the maintenance.

Most team diagnostics are a waste of time.

Personality assessments. 360 feedback. Engagement surveys.

I've deployed all of them. Different countries. Different sectors. Results were always the same.

People answer based on who they wish they were. Not who they are.

The only accurate diagnostic I've ever run didn't involve paperwork.

It was a simulation. I watched a leadership team fight over a fake budget.

Ninety minutes of pressure told me everything: 
Who dominates. Who shuts down. Who gambles. Who freezes.

No test or survey ever comes close.

If you want to know how your team really works, stop handing out forms.

Put them in a real situation. Watch what happens.

Stop measuring what's easy. Start measuring what matters.

HR professionals love to say people are our greatest asset.

Then budget season hits.

Suddenly, people become our biggest cost.

I once sat in a meeting where we spent two hours analyzing travel expenses line by line. 

Then, in ten minutes, the team decided to cut the entire L&D budget.

Someone said, We'll bring it back next year.

We didn't.

Here's the truth. The best leaders I've worked with never repeated empty slogans about people.

Instead, they said, Show me your org chart and your budget. I'll tell you what you actually value.

What you fund is what matters.

If you want leaders who build high-performing teams, start by checking where the money goes.

Because a budget is a strategy with numbers attached.

And people see the difference.

The fastest turnaround I ever led? It took just 90 days.

Not because I had a smarter plan. 
Not because I was a genius.

It was fast because the hard part was already done. The previous leader had diagnosed everything that was broken. He spelled out exactly what needed to change.

But he couldn't pull the trigger.

When I showed up, his summary was right there: 
A file on his desk called, "What we need to do but won't."

He knew. His team knew. They all knew. 

My job wasn't insight. It was permission.

Organizations don't always need a new strategy. 
Sometimes, they just need someone who's ready to do the obvious work.

Execution, not ideas, is often what's missing.

A factory supervisor once cornered me with a simple question.

"Why do you HR people always start with the org chart?"

I didn't have a good answer.

He looked me dead in the eye.

"I've worked here 18 years. I've seen 6 org charts. Same problems every time. Different boxes."

He was right.

Org charts are HR's favorite way to look busy. We shuffle boxes. We invent new department names. We promise "synergies."

But we avoid the hard conversation.

The only question that matters:
Do you have the right people in these seats? Yes or no.

If yes, the org chart barely matters.
If no, no chart in the world will save you.

Stop fussing with the boxes. Start fixing the team.

A plant director once asked me to "fix" his underperformers.

I asked one question: When did you last give them honest feedback?

Silence.

Here's the real problem.

Most "performance issues" aren't about skills or attitude. They're about leaders dodging hard conversations. They avoid feedback for years, then expect HR to clean up the mess. 

Nobody's surprised when the whole system starts to creak.

The employee isn't suddenly useless. They've just never been told the truth.

If you haven't had the conversation yourself, don't call it a performance issue.

Call it what it is: avoidance.

Unpopular opinion: Most HR best practices make crisis worse, not better.

Here's why.

Annual performance reviews? They move at the speed of molasses. In a turnaround, you need real feedback in days, not in a year.
Competency frameworks? Too slow. I'm looking for people who can deliver right now, not check boxes.
Engagement surveys? Forget it. People want action, not another survey.

Every time I enter a company in trouble, my first question is simple,
Which HR processes are you running because someone told you to, not because they work?

We cut half of them on day one.

Suddenly, leaders have energy again. Teams focus on what matters.

What actually gets results in a crisis?
- Right people in the right roles
- Clear expectations
- Fast decisions

Everything else is just window dressing.

If you're stuck in chaos, try removing instead of adding.

Three CEOs in a row told me the same thing:

We need to restructure.

Two of them didn't need restructuring at all.

Cutting up an org chart is a crowd pleaser. It looks bold. It feels like action.

But here's what really happens. Restructuring becomes a substitute for the hard choices no one wants to face. The leader who needs to go, but no one will say it out loud. The strategy that isn't working, but still soaks up time and money.

Instead, everyone gets busy redrawing boxes.

It's expensive theater. The same people keep doing the same things, just with new job titles and reporting lines. The real issues stay untouched.

So before you start moving boxes around, ask yourself:

What decision am I avoiding by launching a restructure?

Figure that out first. You might not need a new org chart at all.

Ever had to reset a team almost from scratch?

I once walked into a unit with 8 managers. Within months, 6 were gone.

Not because they were bad people. Just wrong for what the business needed next.

But here's the moment everyone underestimates... 
The real test wasn't letting people go.

It was looking the 2 who stayed in the eye and saying, 
"I need you to trust me. This will get better."

They had just watched most of their peers leave. 
They had every reason to update their resumes.

But they stayed.

Two years later, the same team broke every performance record.

People think turnarounds are about who you cut. 
They're really about finding who you can build around, and believing in them when it's uncomfortable.

That's how you turn chaos into momentum.

Ona totally not a serious note. 
What do you play with on the weekend?
I’m playing with AI :)
From a relatively innocent photo with sax, this funny silly video which everyone makes now :)
I bet if the traction will be high or not.

FAST POLAND Sp. z o. o.

General Manager Poland, International Business Director

Electrolux

•	Managing Central CEE area consisting of eight countries: Poland, Baltic countries, Ukraine and Caucasus countries, responsible for profitable growth in the region
•	Create long term strategic development plans for the region consisting of: product range, brands (Electrolux, AEG), pricing, distribution policy, marketing investments, go to market plans, finance, after market
•	People leadership with the focus on talents pool development, high engagement index and a right diversity across organization, 200 employees
•	Building and keeping long term relations with key customers, supporting the sales strategy
•	Leading the transformation of the organization into growth of strategic areas like piece of mind, consumer centric approach, new services
•	General management and full P&L responsibility for commercial part of Electrolux business in Poland and region
•	Led to the business growth of 55% in the region and 65% in Poland since 2019, gaining significantly market shares across markets, leading position in key markets

General Manager Poland, Head of Sales Area CEE Central

•	General management and full P&L responsibility for commercial business in Ukraine and Caucasus countries 
•	Implementing the company’s strategy in the region, with the main goal of profitable growth and widening the distribution in Caucasus
•	Improving the profitability through the right commercial strategy (distribution, categories, brands)
•	Keeping relations with existing key customers and establishing new contracts (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan)

General Manager Ukraine and Caucasus

Managing all laundry categories in the Central & Eastern Europe Region
Led to profitable growth across CEE markets, bringing market shares growth of 35%
Creating and implementing a category strategy in the region, in line with the European strategy and ensuring a profitable growth in short and long term.
Developed strategy and launched on the market the Home Comfort categories (air conditioners and water heaters)
Managing Product Line Managers based in local markets.

Head of Product Line Managers, Central&Eastern Europe

Indesit Company

Responsibility for product and brands strategy and all the marketing activities on the Polish market.
Brands & products management
Creating and implementing a marketing strategy for Polish market
Full management of ATL & BTL activities and budgets
Loyalty programs, consumer and trade partners promotions
Close co-opration with sales dept. in scope of planning and supporting sales
Co-operating with European marketing and commercial structures
Team management

Marketing Manager and Product Managers Head

Whirlpool Corporation

Product Manager responsible for Built- in appliances, under Whirlpool brand.
Growing the overall business and market shares in Poland.

Products range and life-cycle management, from market analysis and needs, product launch campaign to phase out.
Preparing and executing consumer and trade partners promotions
Managing loyalty programs for trade partners
Training, both external and internal
Sales planning
Close co-operation with sales force

Product Manager

Polar Wrocław SA

Range management, cooling and washing appliances
Leading to profitable growth and market shares growth 
Took part in the strategy development project after merge with Whirlpool

Polmot Praszka SA

Preparing market analysis for sales and marketing department

Marketing Specialist & Analyst

General manager with strong category and marketing management background in CEE countries, +20 years in consumer electronic and home appliances business, +10 years in Central Eastern European countries (Poland, Ukraine with Caucasus, Russia, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Baltics, Romania, Adriatic region, Greece, Turkey, Kazakhstan),  regional manager, P&L responsibility, business strategy development, product and marketing management, sales, people leadership (up to 200 team), sustainability drive, building the culture with diversity,  remote team management.

Building high performance and engagement teams
Proven leadership skills in multinational, cross cultural environment
Experienced in setting-up and executing Restructuring Projects and Change Management

My Expertise is in:
- Business strategy
- Business management 
- Category / product line management, improving the profitability and growth
- Marketing management, strategic and operational
- International sales and business development
- business turnaround, transformation

Delivered 65% growth last three years, much above targets and markets growth
Led to significant market shares growth, gained leadership position in key categories
Increased significantly the profit pool in the region
Achieved top 3 position with Electrolux brand in Poland
Key player of CEE (incl. Russia, Ukraine) Cluster Leadership Team
P&L responsibility
People Leadership
People and talents development
360 Marketing, digital marketing
Building long term relations with customers 
Driving the sustainability agenda in the region
Digital transformation
Change management
Consumer loyalty
Building diversity and inclusion 
Continuous improvement mindset and projects

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Mikhail Lvovskii

Krzysztof Kudlek

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