FCI

 

Twenty years advising executives on what happens between the plan and the result.

Executive Performance Architecture & Strategic Advisory

Since 2003, I’ve advised founders, CEOs, and senior leaders on the problems that live between strategy and execution — where structure, culture, and operating discipline either carry the plan forward or quietly break it.

Request a conversation.

THE PRACTICE

Most organizations don’t fail on strategy. They fail on the systems meant to carry it — unclear ownership, decisions that stall two levels below where they should be made, values that never made it past the wall they’re printed on.

My work sits at the intersection of leadership performance, organizational design, and operational execution. I partner with executive teams to build environments where people operate with clarity, accountability, and resilience — and where strategy becomes something observable in daily behavior rather than aspirational language in a deck.

Two decades across technology, cybersecurity, financial services, healthcare, and high-growth entrepreneurial environments have made one thing clear: the constraint is rarely ambition. It’s alignment.

WHERE I ADVISE

Leadership and Executive Performance

Counsel for founders, CEOs, and senior leaders on decision-making, effectiveness, and alignment at the top. The focus is sustaining high output without burning down the people producing it — and building the accountability and trust that make a leadership team function as one.

Organizational Design and Workforce Strategy

Structures, operating models, and workforce plans that let an organization scale without losing operational integrity or the engagement of the people inside it.

AI-Enhanced Strategic Intelligence

Bringing emerging AI tools and advanced analytics into the decision-making process — not as novelty, but as a means of sharpening strategic clarity, operational visibility, and speed of execution.

Operational Systems and Execution

Repeatable systems that convert stated priorities into observable behaviors, measurable standards, and consistent delivery. What gets defined gets done.

Growth Strategy and Market Expansion

Identifying where growth actually exists, entering new markets with discipline, and strengthening revenue performance by aligning leadership, culture, and operational capability behind the same objective.

Vendor, Technology, and Infrastructure Review

An objective read on whether your technology stack, vendor relationships, and operational infrastructure are supporting the organization you’re building — or the one you’ve outgrown.

WHAT CHANGES

Across fast-growth startups and established enterprises alike, the work concentrates on the human and operational systems that determine whether performance holds under pressure.

Sharper execution. Performance frameworks that clarify who owns what, tighten accountability, and accelerate decision speed across teams.

Stronger leadership. Executive coaching in high-stakes environments where human error, burnout, or misalignment carried real operational and client risk.

Cultural alignment. Translating abstract values into observable behavior — improving trust, service quality, and how teams work across internal lines.

Sustainable growth. Scaling organizations while holding operational discipline and employee engagement intact, rather than trading one for the other.

SELECTED EXPERIENCE

Work has spanned engagements and collaborations with organizations including Healthtrax, The Works, Fidelity Investments, BNY Mellon, Wellington Management, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Bain, and Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG), among others.

That cross-sector exposure is the point. It’s what allows me to bring pattern recognition from one industry into another — and to help leaders make high-consequence decisions with clarity and discipline, particularly in environments moving through rapid change, complexity, or growth.

CLOSE

If you’re carrying a decision you can’t fully delegate, that’s the conversation.

Most engagements begin with a single conversation about what’s actually in the way.

Request a conversation.

Michael Horsch Fizz

MHF Profile Photo

Michael, Founder and President, FCI

I’m the founder of FITCEO, an advisory practice serving C-level leaders on strategy, business development, and go-to-market decisions across technology, healthcare, and financial services.

Two decades in, my work still comes back to one conviction: organizations don’t outperform because of what’s in the strategy document. They outperform because the people inside them know exactly what winning looks like and why it matters to them.

That’s why measurable performance standards sit at the center of everything I do. Not metrics for their own sake — a clear line of sight from what someone does on a Tuesday to what the organization is actually trying to become. Goals specific enough to act on, and honest enough to be worth pursuing.

Get the human element right, and the financial results stop being a mystery. 

Request a conversation.

Latest posts:

Lucratively empowering the Human Element