All my life I’ve been a fierce force of imagination, persistence, and hard work: like a dragon hunting for gold. But instead of treasure, I’ve been searching for stories to tell and ways to make an impact.

Born in Belarus, I studied journalism in Bulgaria and worked in marketing in Russia, but storytelling has always been my true passion. I create narratives that allow people to explore fresh perspectives in a safe, immersive way.

As a queer, neurodivergent woman from a patriarchal country, I’m passionate about shedding light on complex topics through my work. Over the years, I’ve designed more than 100 LARP games, written 10+ original tabletop campaigns, and worked as a script supervisor on the short film Mein Name Akim (2024), which tells the story of transgender refugees in Germany.

During my MA in Serial Storytelling at IFS Cologne, I honed my skills across genres, working on solo projects as well as collaborating in Writers' Rooms.

Currently, I’m co-developing a visual novel game with a co-author as a passion project.

Now that I've completed my degree, I’m eager to bring my creativity to TV and gaming, crafting stories in both English and German.

Dragons never stop breathing fire. And neither do I, with an endless flow of ideas and stories I can’t wait to share.

Alena Lysiakova

🎧 Too much sound can ruin your audio game.

Audio designers love layering: music, background ambience, footsteps, breathing, radio static, wind, distant sirens, and emotional underscore. 

And suddenly your “immersive experience” feels like standing inside a broken washing machine. 

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most people don’t play audio games in perfect silence. They’re commuting. Cooking. Walking. Folding laundry. 

Audio storytelling competes with real life. If your game requires 100% concentration at all times just to understand what’s happening, you’re designing against the format.

Cognitive overload is real:
🐲 Constant SFX + dense dialogue = fatigue
🐲 Overlapping voices = confusion
🐲 Permanent music bed = emotional flattening
🐲 No breathing room = listener burnout

Immersion doesn’t come from “more sound.” It comes from intentional sound. Silence matters. Contrast matters. Clarity matters. Design audio like oxygen.

Good audio narrative design respects the listener’s brain, because the worst experience isn’t “hard,” it’s exhausting.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames

Alena Lysiakova 🐉

Narrative designer and screenwriter ▶️ Let's create stories that make an impact

Here’s something most audio writers don’t plan for 👉 players will mishear things. 


Names. Instructions. Locations. Important clues. And no, it’s not because they’re inattentive. It’s because audio competes with real life.

If your entire branching logic collapses because someone misheard “Mara” as “Nara,” that’s not player failure. 👉 That’s architectural fragility.

Designing for mishearing means:
👾 Avoid critical distinctions that rely on similar-sounding names
🐲 Reinforce important information through variation, not repetition
👾 Use context to clarify meaning instead of assuming perfect recall
🐲 Make systems resilient to imperfect listening

In audio, clarity isn’t about simplifying the story. It’s about building redundancy intelligently. The player shouldn’t need studio-level focus to follow your game.

If your structure only works in perfect silence with perfect attention, it’s not built for the real world.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames #InteractiveStorytelling

The uncomfortable truth about writing for audio: sometimes experience gets in the way. 🐲 


I coach a lot of writers transitioning into interactive audio, and I keep seeing the same pattern: the more experienced the writer, the harder it can be to adapt.

Not because they’re not talented, but because they’re used to controlling the frame.

In audio, you don’t have visuals to lean on. You don’t have text people can reread. You don’t have cinematic shortcuts.

You have a voice. Timing. Space. Silence. Choice phrasing. Cognitive load.

And if you try to force screenwriting logic or prose logic onto audio without adjusting, the story simply doesn’t breathe. 

💡 Audio is a different architecture. It demands different pacing, different exposition control and different emotional calibration.

That’s why transitioning with a coach helps. Not because you don’t know how to write, but because someone needs to point out the invisible friction early.

You can read all the documents you want. Clarity usually comes when someone listens and says, “This works. This doesn’t. And here’s why, specifically for audio.”

Different medium requires different muscles. And once they click, audio becomes addictive.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames #StoryCoaching

Dating used to be awkward dinners and nervous eye contact… now it’s co-op bosses and shared loot drops. 🎮💘

In my latest article, I dig into why playing together is becoming the new dating, and how games are quietly reshaping connection, chemistry, and even heartbreak.

👉 https://lnkd.in/eU6XgMn8

If you’re into storytelling, relationships, or just fascinated by how games intersect with real life feelings, this one might hit a nerve.

#GamingCulture #Storytelling

Open article: Why playing together is the new dating by meer.com

🎧 Your audio game must survive interruptions


People don’t play audio games the way they play visual ones.  They’re walking. Cooking. Commuting. Someone asks them a question. A notification pops up. The subway arrives.

And suddenly your carefully crafted scene is paused for five minutes.

🐲 When they come back, the player shouldn’t feel lost. That’s why good audio narrative design builds re-entry points into the architecture, those small structural cues that help the brain reconnect:

👾 A character briefly restating the immediate goal
👾A reaction that reminds the player what just happened
👾Environmental cues that re-establish the situation
👾A choice that naturally summarizes the stakes

These moments are navigation; because audio games exist in the middle of real life, not inside a perfectly controlled gaming session. 

💡 If your story only works when the listener gives it uninterrupted attention, you’re designing for an ideal player that doesn’t exist. Good audio architecture assumes interruptions and quietly guides the player back in.

#audiogames #narrativedesign #storyarchitecture

In visual games, players always know where they are. There’s a map, a UI, and a quest log. Basically, something grounding them.

In audio there is nothing like that. Which means if you don’t deliberately build structural anchors, your story starts to drift.

Structural anchors are recurring elements that help listeners orient themselves without realizing it.

It could be:
🐲 A specific location you return to
🐲 A character who always reappears between major beats
🐲 A ritual moment (a radio check-in, a diary entry, a nightly call)
🐲 A recurring sound cue that signals transition

These anchors are architecture. Without them, scenes blur. Branches feel random. The player doesn’t feel lost because the plot is confusing; they feel lost because there’s no spatial or emotional reference point. Audio needs repetition with intention.

When players hear that familiar voice, that recurring space, that structural checkpoint, their brain relaxes. Orientation returns. Engagement stabilizes.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames

All screenplays benefit from being visual. 
💡 But for vertical storytelling, it’s not a nice bonus: it’s survival.


In a traditional film or TV script, you can sometimes get away with dialogue carrying the scene. Two characters talking in a room can still work if the emotional stakes are strong enough. In verticals, that scene is dead on arrival.

The viewer is watching on a phone, often half-distracted, scrolling with their thumb, ready to abandon you at any second. If nothing visually happens, the story simply disappears. 👉 Vertical scenes need immediate visual signals.

You don't need long exposition or dialogue. Just one visual action that tells the entire story beat.

🐲 That’s the real discipline vertical storytelling teaches you: if the audience can understand the moment without sound, you’re probably doing it right.
#Screenwriting #VerticalSeries #Storytelling

Choices without context aren’t suspenseful. 💀 


They’re just guesses.

🐲 When a player is asked to make a decision, they need enough information to imagine possible outcomes, not the exact result, but the shape of the risk.

Take this:
“Should he hide or confront the burglar?”
That’s not a meaningful choice. It’s a coin toss.

Now compare it to:
“Hiding is probably the safer choice, but what if he can stop the thief right now? Should he hide or confront the burglar?”

Same options. Completely different experience.

💡 The second version gives the player something to weigh: safety vs. action, fear vs. responsibility, risk now vs. regret later.

Good narrative design isn’t about revealing consequences. It’s about framing decisions so the player can reason emotionally, not randomly.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames #GameWriting

I’ll be attending Series Mania Forum on March 24 to 26.


Do you want to talk series and verticals? 🎬  
🐲 Let's meet and talk over coffee in Lille. 

#SeriesMania #VerticalSeries #Networking

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.

⸻

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.

⸻

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.

⸻

Where I typically engage

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

Scope: EMEA.

⸻

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


Mikhail Lvovskii

€50,000 blown on a leadership offsite.

Three months later, same problems.

Great facilitator. Gorgeous venue. Everyone left happy.

Nothing changed.

The offsite treated symptoms, not systems.
For a week, everyone played nice. Then reality snapped back.

One person still hogged decisions.
Old conflicts, still swept under the rug.
Alignment, still fake.

Feeling good together doesn't fix teams.
Seeing, then fixing, how a team actually works does. 

Most team building is a vacation from dysfunction.
Real development? Brutal. It's a mirror, not a retreat.

undefined undefined

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

Team effectiveness - from strategy to execution · Creator of QurumQ team behavior simulation · ex-Electrolux, Linde, Samsung, IBM, Luxoft

She was one of our best.

On her last day, I asked why she was really leaving.

She said, "I've been leaving for two years. No one noticed."

That's the part no one wants to hear.

By the time someone resigns, the decision was made months ago.

You can track the trail if you bother to look.

First comes the silence in meetings. 
Then the suggestions that go nowhere.
After that, the missed promotion, or no feedback at all.

It's a slow fade.

Most companies don't see it, or pretend not to.

Then they schedule the exit interview, hoping for some honest insight.

But by then, it's just an autopsy.

The real work is upstream. If you want blunt truth, ask before people disengage. 

Stay interviews. Candid check-ins. Not the end, the middle.

Ask early. Ask often. Or get comfortable with good people silently slipping out the door.

You choose which kind of interview you prefer.

Forget teaching.

The fastest way to develop a team isn't to lecture, train, or hand them a new model.

It's to throw them into a real situation that reveals their default patterns, good and bad.

No slides. No expert diagnosis. Just a mirror.

Let them see the gap for themselves.

After 25 years of running all the types of workshops and interventions, I don't believe in top-down development.

People don't shift because someone tells them how.

They shift when they see what they're actually doing, together, in real time.

That discomfort? That clarity? It does the heavy lifting.

The hard part: engineering that moment without artifice or theater.

That's the edge I've been focused on. More on the method soon.

There are two types of team building.

One asks, "Do we like each other?"
That's escape rooms, cooking classes, drinks after work.
Easy to buy, easy to deliver.
Zero impact on Monday morning.

The other asks, "How do we function when it matters?"
Now you're talking resource constraints, time pressure, clashing priorities.
You put the team in the fire. Watch what surfaces.
It's messy. It's uncomfortable. Most companies run the other way.

After 25 years, I've seen the same pattern.
- Teams that choose comfort stay stuck.
- Teams that choose the mirror, the hard look at reality, break through every time.

You want transformation?
Skip the trust falls.
Choose the mirror.

The CHRO wanted a succession plan.

I only asked one question:
Who on your team would you actually bet on?

Silence.

Not because they didn't know.
Because saying it out loud means facing the reality.

Most succession planning is corporate theater.
- Map names to boxes.
- Run assessments.
- Draft development plans.
Nothing happens.

The real questions never make the agenda:
- Who's truly ready?
- Who never will be?
- Who's here just because it's easy to keep them?

HR builds frameworks.
Leadership dodges decisions.

If your succession plan hasn't changed in six months,
 it's not a plan.
It's paperwork.

Years ago I was brought in to diagnose why a leadership team at a manufacturing company kept failing to execute strategy.

They had the right people. Strong individual performers. Clear goals.

I sat in on three meetings. That’s all it took.

Here’s what I saw:

The CEO spoke first every time. Not because he wanted to dominate — he genuinely thought he was “setting direction.”

But the moment he spoke, the room reorganized around his opinion. People who had different views either stayed quiet or reframed their ideas to align with what he’d already said.

The team wasn’t failing at execution. They were failing at decision quality — because every decision was really one person’s decision with everyone else’s fingerprints on it.

When I showed him the pattern, he was genuinely shocked. “But I always ask for input.”

He did. After stating his own view. Which changed everything.

The fix was simple: he stopped speaking first. Within two months, the quality of strategic decisions improved visibly.

The hardest leadership problems aren’t about what leaders do wrong.
They’re about what leaders can’t see about what they do.

No alternative text description for this image

When I was building QurumQ, everyone asked: “Why not just make an app?”

Here’s why:

When people stare at screens, they stare at screens.
When people hold cards, pass dice, and spread decisions across a table - they talk to each other.

I’ve watched hundreds of teams in corporate settings.
The moment you put a laptop between people, the conversation changes. They start optimizing individually. They stop negotiating. Eye contact drops.

Physical objects do something digital can’t: they create a shared space.

When a team is debating whether to invest in education or real estate, and the cards are sitting on the table between them - the decision feels real. The disagreement feels real. The compromise feels real.

That’s not nostalgia for board games. That’s behavioral science.

The digital engine runs invisibly underneath: handling calculations, tracking scores, generating reports.

But what the team sees and touches? Cards. Dice. Each other.

Because the goal isn’t to play a game.
The goal is to see how you work together, and you can’t do that through a screen.

HR keeps buying what's easy to explain.

Quiz night? That one sells itself. It's cheap. Everyone joins in. No heavy lifting.

But try selling a simulation that shows which leaders choke, stall, or step up in real decisions.

Suddenly, it's too hard to pitch. The CFO gives you a blank stare.

So HR grabs the thing with the simple story. Entertainment wins. Real change loses.

Then they wonder why nothing sticks. Why leaders keep repeating the same mistakes.

The real blocker in corporate learning isn't a lack of ideas. It's a fear of anything that can't be explained in a single line.

If your solution is neat and fun, it lives.
If it reveals hard truths, it dies in the meeting room.

Real transformation isn't simple. The pitch shouldn't be either.

I watched 12 teams solve the same problem, with the same rules and the same time.

Not a single team did it the same way.

But some patterns stood out.

 Teams with one loud voice moved fast. They also got the worst results.

Teams that "wasted" time arguing every angle? They made fewer mistakes.

And when someone asked, "Wait, what are we optimizing for?", that team usually crushed the ones who just rolled up their sleeves and started working.

The kicker?
Teams that thought they nailed it weren't always the ones who actually did.

Especially under pressure, confidence and competence are two different signals.

If your team moves fast and sounds sure of themselves, you might want to check what they're actually delivering.

Networking w swiecie przedsiębiorców jest niezbędny.
Ale jak być jeżeli nie jesteś "stąd"?

Przeprowadziłem się do Wrocławia, no i do Polski, ponad 12 łat temu, po 37 łatach spędzonych w rodzinnym kraju i miejście.

Tak się stało ze długie łata skupiłem się na karjerze korporacyjnej tego pracodawcy który mi tutaj przywiózł. I nie myśliałem że poza ramami tego pracodawcy też jest życie. Nie budowałem sieci.

Tak się wydarzyło że 5 łat temu stwierdziłem że chcę kontynuować swoją drogę samodzielnie, prowadzić własny biznes. 
Ale się okazało że network który miałem był słaby. Jakość sieci po moim ocenam bardzo niska. Większość wartościowych kontaktów to jedna firma - mój były pracodawca.

Probowałem rózne sposoby, ale włąsnie nic nie działa lepiej niż spotkanie tet-a-tet i dzielenie się wiedzą.

Dzięki Martyna Lempert, z której się poznaliśmy z połtora tygodni chyba, już po raz drugi biorę udział w spotkaniu kameralnym przedsiębiorców Wrocławia. I to własnie jest wartość ludzkich relacji - poradzić, skierować, pomóc. 
Dzięki Martyna jeszcze raz!

O wydarzeniu:
Serial networkers Meetup - Wrocław!✅ 

Data: 6 marca 2026
Miejsce: Ace of Space Renoma, Świdnicka 40, Wrocław.
Czas: 16:00-21:00

Bilety: https://lnkd.in/drptwwBB

CEO TeamBoost - przekładam cele firm na działania ludzi | Mentoring C-Level - Leadership | Programy rozwojowe | Procesy HR wspierające cele biznesowe firmy

A CFO once told me, "HR talks about people like they're a religion, not a business."

I was offended. For about ten seconds.

Then it clicked. He was right.

We say "talent is our greatest asset" but can't put a number on it.

We say "culture drives performance" but can't measure it.

We say "engagement matters" but never connect it to revenue.

Then we act shocked when we're left out of real decisions.

HR has a language problem. We preach. The business does math.

The answer isn't to ditch the human element. It's to translate it.

If you can't prove your work moves a number your CFO checks, you're not strategic. 
 You're just decoration.

Sent hundreds of managers to leadership training.

Every feedback form was glowing.
"Eye-opening." "Very useful." "Will apply immediately."

But come Monday, nothing changed.

Took me years to see the gap.

Training tells you what good leadership looks like.
It never shows what your leadership actually is.

There's a world of difference between:
- Knowing you should listen more
- And watching yourself interrupt three people in a row when things get tight.

The first is advice.
The second is a mirror.

Most companies spend a fortune on advice.
Almost none bother with mirrors.

That's why so many "trained" managers never improve.

Most leadership teams think their collaboration is strong.

Surveys will back that up.

But watch them try to split a shrinking budget in real time.

That's where the truth shows up.

I once ran a survey for a leadership team. 90 percent rated their collaboration as strong or very strong.

Then I watched them actually work together.

It took 30 minutes for two people to bulldoze every decision. One person checked out completely. The rest held their ground but never moved the conversation forward.

Nobody lied on the survey. They honestly thought they were a high-performing team.

But self-perception is not data.

If you want to know how your team works, stop asking. Start watching.

Observed behavior is the only data that counts.

Everyone thinks they know how their team works.

They don't.

I've spent 25 years inside boardrooms, factory floors, crisis war rooms. Seen the same thing play out, everywhere.

What people say in surveys, workshops, performance reviews , irrelevant.

When the clock's ticking and stakes are real, most teams have no idea how they behave.

So I built something that shows them.

It's called QurumQ.

Not a training. Not a game.

A two-hour simulation that drags team behavior into the open. Real decisions, real pressure. No scripts, no right answers, no place to hide.

10 simulated years in 2 hours.
Physical cards. Digital engine. Electronic dice.
Crises, dilemmas, career moves, deals, betrayals. All of it.

Leadership appears or vanishes.
Risk-takers and risk-dodgers reveal themselves.
You see who actually listens, and who's just waiting to talk.

It's a mirror. Brutal, clear, unfiltered.

Suitable for offsite setting, fully online version for remote teams, multi-days marathon with short daily intervention and deepest level reflection.

I'm running beta sessions now. Looking for 10-15 companies in Europe ready to find out how their team really works under pressure.
Nice discounts guaranteed!

If you own team dynamics, decision-making, or leadership development, Id love to show you exactly what this simulation looks like. 
Scheduling link in a first comment. Or just DM me to agree for a demo.

The worst team conflict is silent.

I've seen leadership teams who brag about "alignment." No debates. Quick decisions. Lots of nodding.

Looks smooth. Until you see the mess underneath.

Three strategies pulling in opposite directions. Secret alliances. One person overloaded while the rest jockey for status.

The show of harmony was just that, a show.

Healthy teams fight in the room, then walk out aligned. 
Dysfunctional teams nod in the room and undercut each other later.

If your meetings never get heated, don't kid yourself. That's not alignment.
 
That's avoidance.

In almost every team I’ve observed, there’s someone who barely speaks.

They’re not disengaged. They’re processing.

While the loud voices debate, the quiet person is tracking something the others miss: the pattern. The assumption nobody questioned. The risk nobody named.

Here’s the problem:

Most teams reward volume, not value. The person who speaks most confidently gets the most influence - regardless of whether they’re right.

And the quiet person? They either stay quiet (and the team loses their insight) or they learn to be louder (and the team loses their depth).

The best leaders I’ve worked with don’t ask “does anyone have something to add?”

They ask the quiet person directly: “You’ve been listening carefully. What are we missing?”

That one question changes everything.

Not because quiet people are always right. But because a team that only hears its loudest members is making decisions with half the available intelligence.

Dla moich polsko-języcznych kolegów z HR.
Jeżeli sprawy przyszlośći HR dla Was są bliskimi, jeżeli chcielibyście dzielić wiedzą praktyczną o róznych aspektach HR - same praktyka, samy "sok" wartości HRu dla biznesu, zachęcam do obserwacji International HR Society.

A jako przykład dzielię się jednym z kolejnych wydarzeń, które moim zdaniem podrusza najbardziej aktualny temat fazy przełomowej dla HRu, jak stoimy przed transformacją ludzko-AIowej, hybridowych organizacji i tak dalej.

Transformacja cyfrowa HR nie zaczyna się od narzędzia. Zaczyna się od kompetencji, partnerstwa HR + IT i decyzji, że HR przestaje być wyłącznie administracją.

Już 26 marca o godz. 11:00 zapraszamy na Knowledge Shot (20 min), a w nim praktyczny case:

„Nowe technologie, nowe kompetencje – HR w cyfrowej rzeczywistości na przykładzie Inter Cars S.A.” przedstawi Krzysztof Zawistowski. 
W środku:
- wyzwanie skalowania HR w dynamicznie rosnącej organizacji,
- przejście od roli administracyjnej do roli partnera biznesu,
- budowanie partnerstwa HR + IT w transformacji cyfrowej,
- zmiana kompetencji i „tożsamości” zespołu HR - co działa, a co blokuje zmianę.

Na koniec: konkretne lekcje, które pomagają przeprowadzać podobne zmiany szybciej i lepiej (bez typowych pułapek).

Zapraszamy wszystkich przedstawicieli działów HR. Link do formularza zgłoszeniowego znajduje się w komentarzu.

Obserwuj International HR Society jeśli chcesz być na bieżąco z kolejnymi odcinkami i dołącz do bezpłatnych społeczności na LinkedIn.

Retrospectives are everywhere.

But most are a waste of time.

People obsess over what went wrong, what could be improved, what the team should do next time.

Nobody asks the only question that matters: How did we actually make that decision in the first place?

Everyone remembers missing the deadline.
So they say, plan better next time.

But nobody rewinds to the meeting where someone flagged the risk, got ignored, and the group charged ahead.

The real mistake? The way the room made decisions. Not the plan itself.

By the time you get to the retrospective, everyone's already changed the story in their head.

You can't fix a process you never saw.

Stop asking what went wrong.

Start asking: what happened in the room when it mattered, and why did nobody stop a bad call in real time?

That's where the real answers are.

I've sat in on dozens of teams tackling the same problem.

The outcome is set in the first three minutes.

Not by strategy. Not by intelligence. By something simpler.

Who asks a question before proposing a solution?

Teams that start with "What are we actually dealing with?" beat teams that start with "Here's what we should do." Every time.

The uncomfortable part? The teams that rush to solutions feel better. They look decisive. They act confident.

They just end up being wrong, more often than not.

Speed of decision is not quality of decision.

But put any team under pressure, and almost all of them confuse the two.

Last week I ran a QurumQ session with 4 teams.

Same game. Same rules. Same time pressure. Same information available to everyone.

One team finished first. They were fast, decisive, and confident.
They came in last.

The team that won? They spent the first round arguing. One person kept asking “but what if we’re wrong?” The others were visibly frustrated.

By round 4, that team had developed something the others never did: a habit of testing assumptions before committing resources.

The “slow” team didn’t just win the game. They built a decision-making process that compounded over time.

The “fast” team? They made the same type of mistake in round 8 that they made in round 2. They just made it faster.

Speed without reflection isn’t efficiency. It’s repetition.

This is what I built QurumQ to reveal. Not who wins, but how teams develop (or fail to develop) their process under pressure.

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Alena Lysiakova

Mikhail Lvovskii

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taplio

The Battle

Alena Lysiakova

Mikhail Lvovskii

Followers

Posts

Engagements

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Alena Lysiakova's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMikhail Lvovskii's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreAlena Lysiakova's LinkedIn Performance