Fractional COO for Fintechs who want to increase their profits 🦅 Build strength aligned, high-performing teams and stop doing everything yourself.

Growth only matters if it lasts - and scales efficiently.

First one in, last one out of the office?

Still doing work that others should - or that no one really should?
Trading focus and family time for “just a few more hours”?

You’re not disorganized - you’re running a company that’s quietly running on you.

That’s the trap every great founder eventually falls into.
I know, because I did too.

Early in my career, I led a team the hard way — through sheer effort.
Then I started building structures that combined my background in computer science, leadership, and management.
The results: fewer hours, better output, and a team that wasn’t just performing — but thinking.

When I became a CEO, I scaled that approach into a full operating architecture:

🔹focused only on tasks that pushed the business forward,
🔹built trust-based, values-driven teams,
🔹replaced “busy work” with measurable momentum, and
🔹ran everything from hiring to tech and customer service on aligned principles.

We grew from 6 to 7 digits — sustainably, and without burnout.

Today, I work with CEOs and founders who want their freedom back - 
✨to build organizations that scale without dependency,
✨where growth stays real, people stay energized,
✨and leadership sustains - not drains.

 Leadership & Organizational Architect | ETH Alum 🦅
Let’s build a company that grows with you, not on you.

Myrto Z.

Most leaders don't recognise when noise replaces signal.

Why?

Because the shift happens gradually -
One extra meeting here, another urgent request there, until your entire day becomes reactive.

I see this pattern with every founder I work with:
The moment their company hits a certain scale, their role distorts.

They're no longer designing the business -
They're responding to it.

The requests feel legitimate. The questions seem important.

The decisions appear urgent.

But here's what's actually happening: your organisational architecture has outgrown your leadership structure.

When systems lack clarity, everything becomes your problem to solve.

When accountability flows upward instead of outward, every decision lands on your desk.

When execution rhythm breaks down, urgency replaces priority.

The work isn't the issue -
It's that you've become the bottleneck in your own system.

Strong leaders don't need more hours in the day.

They need interference removed so the right decisions become self-evident again.

The signal was always there -
It's just been buried under structural noise.

Myrto Zehnder 🦅

For CEOs who want their freedom back 🦅 | Designing leadership and organizational architecture that keeps growth real, people energized, and results compounding - sustainably | ETH Alum

I carried twelve roles simultaneously - leader, partner, problem-solver - and somehow lost myself entirely in the operational noise.

Back in middle management, I started recognising the system drift.

The gap between what I claimed to value and how I was actually operating.

I was performing competent leadership whilst ignoring every signal from my own decision-making architecture.

The role distortion was complete. I'd become reactive to my own company's demands rather than designing the leadership structure that would serve both the business and my actual capacity.

What I learned then became the foundation for everything:

You cannot lead with clarity when your personal operating system is misaligned.

Not with your values. Not with your time allocation.

Not with your authentic decision-making rhythm.

Later, as CEO, I didn't just survive the altitude - I designed for it.

But only because I'd addressed the leadership architecture first, starting with my own role definition.

The freedom to lead doesn't begin in the boardroom.

It begins with honest assessment of where you're performing leadership versus where you're actually living it.

✨ SPARK ✨  
Scan today for one moment where your external leadership performance didn't match your internal values. No judgment - just diagnostic clarity about the gap.

For the past months, we’ve explored 15 Leadership Villains, the everyday patterns that quietly create friction in teams. They were fun to name, but each one reflects something deeper: a systemic behaviour that shows up when clarity and structure are out of sync.

What looks like a people issue often has its roots in the architecture around the leader,  not the individuals themselves.

We’ve so far only touched the surface.
Each Villain is a signal.
And signals matter.

So as this cycle continues, I’ll be bringing a more structural perspective to the Villains, moving from the surface symptoms to the patterns they reveal in leadership systems.

Same villains. Clearer insight. Deeper layer. More practical relevance for CEOs and leaders.

Because once you see the structure underneath the behaviour, you know exactly where to begin.

I see this altitude loss happen with every CEO I work with.

The moment they drop into operational details, their entire leadership identity shifts.

They stop being the architect of their organisation and become its most expensive project manager.

It's not about workload  -  I've seen leaders handle massive complexity whilst maintaining their strategic altitude.

It's about mental positioning.

When you're operating at ground level, you can only see the immediate problem in front of you.

Every decision becomes urgent. Every conversation becomes tactical.

Every day becomes reactive.

But leadership architecture requires a different vantage point.

From altitude, you see patterns instead of problems.

You see systems instead of symptoms. You see the organisational rhythm that needs your attention, not the operational noise that demands it.

The companies that scale sustainably have leaders who protect their altitude fiercely.

They understand that their primary role isn't to solve problems  -  it's to design the systems that prevent problems from reaching them.

Your altitude determines your organisation's ceiling.

Where are you choosing to operate from?

Something revealing happens when I examine the calendars of overwhelmed CEOs:

The erosion didn't begin with the crisis they're managing today.

It started months earlier, in seemingly harmless moments - accepting "quick calls" that became standing meetings, allowing urgent requests to bypass established processes, and gradually shifting from decision-maker to decision-bottleneck.

What appears as sudden clarity loss is actually systematic altitude degradation.

The CEO who once operated from strategic height finds themselves pulled into operational weeds, not because the business demands it, but because the leadership architecture has quietly shifted around them.

Their role has drifted from architect to firefighter.

The organisation, sensing this displacement, begins compensating - creating informal decision paths, developing workarounds, and inadvertently training the CEO to remain reactive rather than directive.

This isn't about time management or delegation techniques.

It's about recognising that leadership clarity requires structural protection, not motivational restoration.

The most capable CEOs I work with didn't lose their edge - they lost their position within their own organisational system.

When you're constantly pulled down to solve what others should handle, strategic thinking becomes a luxury you can't afford.

The hardest truth about leadership?

You're not drowning because you lack capability  -  you're drowning because your systems haven't evolved with your role.

I stopped white-knuckling my days when I realised alignment wasn't just about values.

It was about architecture.

The systems that got you here:
→ Calendar ownership that belongs to everyone else
→ Vision execution that lives in your head alone
→ Decision-making that flows through you

These create role distortion. You become the bottleneck instead of the catalyst.

So I built different systems:
🧩 Time protection that actually holds
🛑 Decision frameworks that reduce cognitive load
🗺️ Vision translation that creates shared ownership

The goal wasn't perfection. It was breathing room  -  for me and my organisation.

Because here's what I learned: if your systems don't support who you're becoming as a leader, they're actively working against your company's growth.

Your calendar reveals your true organisational architecture. And most of the time, it's designed for the leader you used to be.

✨ SPARK ✨
Look at next week's calendar. What's one recurring decision or task that could be systematised, delegated, or eliminated? Start with what's creating the most decision fatigue  -  not necessarily the highest stakes.

Hybridarbeit scheitert selten an Technik. Meist an Führung.

Im aktuellen personalschweiz Fachartikel beleuchten wir, warum hybride Zusammenarbeit kein Organisationsmodell ist, sondern eine Führungsarchitektur - und was heute wirklich den Unterschied macht.

HSLU – Institut für Betriebs- und Regionalökonomie IBR

View company: HSLU – Institut für Betriebs- und Regionalökonomie IBR

Das Innosuisse-Projekt «hyFiT» der HSLU Hochschule Luzern mit Pleinert & Partner zeigt: Erfolgreiche #hybride #Führung entsteht durch das gezielte Zusammenspiel von Kompetenzen, Technologie und Kontext. Führungskräfte, die diese Dimensionen reflektieren und gezielt entwickeln, schaffen Teams, die verbunden bleiben, klar kommunizieren und Innovation ermöglichen – ganz unabhängig vom Standort über Länder, Zeitzonen und Sprachen hinweg.

Mehr dazu im Artikel «Hybride Führung – gekommen, um zu bleiben» in personalSCHWEIZ (Ausgabe 11/2025) von Rea Haldemann, Ingo Stolz, Dr. Helena Pleinert, Moana Monnier und Myrto Z. 

#hslu #hsluwirtschaft

Hybride Führung - gekommen, um zu bleiben

Providing rocket fuel for ambitious teams: evidence based models and methods to unleash the full potential of organizations

Looking forward to my LinkedIn Live conversation with Dr. Henrietta Carbonel!

https://lnkd.in/eCrZuFx9

Mega International Commercial Bank Co., Ltd

Development of complex interfaces for the import and export of client and asset static data, coaching of Junior developers. Subcontracted via Synpulse.

Senior Interface Developer

Brewin Dolphin

Definition of the data migration mapping, leading two developers and one BA, clarification of open issues with bank business representatives.  Subcontracted via Avaloq.

Data Migration Stream Lead

HSBC

System integration definition in the payments and settlement area, detailing SWIFT messaging processes, managing implementation of changes in Avaloq and group systems and end to end testing across HSBC group systems. Subcontracted via Ayaval

Solution Architect 

Deutsche Bank

Data Migration project of Deutsche Bank Luxemburg. Analysis and specification of the data migration mapping, implementation of that mapping and execution during testing and cutover.  Subcontracted via Avaloq Sourcing.

Data Migration Engineer

Deutsche Apotheker- und Ärztebank - apoBank

Stream lead data migration during a prestudy. Creation of a data migration concept, define scope and split of responsibilities as well as provide an estimate. Sucontracted via Vanadys.

Barclays Private Bank

Study on how to automate and optimise backoffice operations with Avaloq, calculation of the business case and establishment of an implementation plan. Later implementation of this plan managing an offshore development team in Bangalore, India. Subcontracted via HCL Technologies.

Avaloq

- Line manager for up to 5 software engineers forming a small development team analysing UK specific requirements and adapting the Avaloq kernel to the UK, among others a CREST interface and UK corporate actions. 
- Presales support for various prospects in particular in the areas of system architecture, data migration and target operating model. 
- Helped building up the office from initially 4 staff to an over 20 staff operation doing sales, consultancy and development. Recruited and coached most consultants and software engineers in the office and was the line manager of ¾ of the office's high performers. 
- Successfully lobbied within the organisation for the decentralisation of development and the official recognition and creation of dedicated budgets for local development teams. Supported the executive board in delivering a definition of roles and responsibilities for such teams.
- Managed the UK product localisation budget of over £1 mio.

Head of Product Localisation UK

•Definition of the system integration between Avaloq and external systems. Delivery of a detailed document as part of the project contract between Avaloq and Canaccord.
•Migration concept and definition of roles and responsibilities between Canaccord and Avaloq. Delivery of a detailed document as part of the project contract between Avaloq and Canaccord.
•Setting up release management processes, defining coding conventions and supporting critical cross-stream issues. 
•Data migration SME for the project, supporting the migration stream on critical issues. Successfully resolved a blocker around a complex inflight transaction migration by delivering a clear definition of the approach that could be shared and agreed by all stakeholders and could be successfully implemented by a migration developer.

Solution Architect

•Definition and documentation of the system integration between Avaloq and Barclays group systems in collaboration with the Barclays Wealth lead architect. 
•Stream lead on the Avaloq implementation project for Individual Saving Account (ISA). Delivered a specification and design document which was successfully implemented by a developer. 
•Stream lead for data architecture and object modelling. Successfully removed a go-live risk which arose from the lack of a clear definition of the mapping of data structures and references between Avaloq, legacy systems and external applications. Pushed for clarification of the outstanding issues with Barclays business representatives and delivered a document under high time pressure specifying the all these aspects. This document was used by all stakeholders, in particular all Avaloq functional streams,  data migration, Barclays business representatives and external application managers. Managed a turnaround of the situation such that object modelling was not a go-live risk any more.

Solutions Architect

•Analysed requirements for UK tax wrappers ISAs, SIPPs and Offshore bonds for a major prospect.
•Rapid prototyping of tax wrapper functionality for demo purposes and presentation to client representatives.
•SME support throughout the workshops.

Presales consultant

•Implementation of complext OTC derivative products on Avaloq for the client.
•Creation of project plans and coordination of project activities.
•Management of up to 8 local and expat developers. 
•Project was delayed by 1 month and not progressing when taking over the position. Reduced this delay to 1 week and unblocked the situation by creating a contractually binding specification of the requirements to stop scope creep and working in parallel on the elements ready for development. Managed this turnaround under high time pressure and in a foreign business environment.

Project manager

- Team lead of up to 14 developers and senior business analysts
- Architecture and design review of new functionality in the treasury area, e.g. FX book keeping and transactions, Money Market deposits and liquidity management, OTC derivatives such as Interest Rate Swaps, Swaptions and Forward Rate Agreements

Head Forex, Money Market and Interest Derivatives

•From a team of 3, built up a development organisation of up to 14  developers and senior business analysts, line management of 3 team managers and overall responsibility for the organisation. 
•Removed a risk for the company from overselling in the treasury area by successfully delivering contractual commitments.
•Architecture and design reviews of new functionality in the area, in particular:

--FX position keeping and transactions (spot, forward, swap)
--Interest Rate Swaps, Caps, Floors, Collars, Swaptions
--Money Market Contracts and cash reporting

Head of Treasury development team

•Development of new functionality for mass pooling and placement.
•Development of a new service for parallelised order generation. This allowed various clients  to massively increase the volumes of their fund saving business.
•Model parameterisation of the module.
•Implementation in PL/SQL and Avaloq Script on Oracle 9i.

Developer in the Securities Trading team

•Release upgrade of an existing fund saving platform.
•Project lead for a team of 3 developers and 1 business analyst.
•Performance tuning by parallelising investment runs.
•Work in collaboration with client to ensure functional correctness after the upgrade.

Accenture

Developer and later team lead on a core banking system replacement project
•Development of an automated functional testing framework.
•Chief programmer and team lead for up to 2 developers.

Developer and later team lead

Developer on a project implementing a central counterparty for shares trading
•Design, implementation and tuning of a trade import interface.
•Development in the application architecture team.

Developer

- Avaloq Certified Professional with over 15 years of working experience on the Avaloq banking system, over 17 years in financial services
- Specialist for Avaloq related system integration, data architecture and migration and target operating model definition
- Recruitment, coaching and retention of high performing Avaloq development teams and large network in the Avaloq community
- Computer science background with excellent analytical skills and strong communicator both with technical and non-technical staff
- Geographically flexible and multi-lingual.

taplio

The Battle

Myrto Z.

Samuel Knopf

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Samuel Knopf

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