Il Collegio — Intellectual Profile Interview

Section I

Who you are

Your name (or a pseudonym if you prefer)

Current role

Sector / context

Years of experience

Geography

What is the central problem you spend most of your working life trying to solve? Not your job description — the actual problem that keeps returning regardless of the organisation you're in.

Section II

Your intellectual position

What is the single most important thing most people in your field get wrong about organisations? The received wisdom that frustrates you most. Be specific — a claim, not a feeling.

Where does this belief come from — and why does it persist?

Which thinker or framework has most shaped how you see organisations? And where do you now diverge from them? The divergence matters as much as the influence.

Name one idea that was fashionable in your field when you started your career that has since proven wrong or harmful.

What replaced it — and are you confident the replacement is actually better?

Section III

Where you push back

Eight statements — four on organisation design, four on people and HR. Mark your honest reaction to each. Brief reasons are more useful than long ones.

Organisation Design

1. "Most organisational failures are design failures, not leadership failures."

Strongly agree — this is underappreciated Broadly agree, with caveats Disagree — leadership matters more than design The framing is the problem

2. "Culture follows structure. Trying to change culture without changing the structures that produce it is wasted effort."

Strongly agree — structure shapes culture, not the reverse Broadly agree, but the relationship runs both ways Disagree — culture is the prior condition, structure follows it The distinction is artificial — they co-evolve

3. "Organisations that delegate capability-building to HR will lose to those that make it a line responsibility."

Strongly agree Broadly agree, with caveats Disagree — HR ownership of capability is the right model The distinction doesn't hold in practice

4. "AI will not transform HR. It will expose how little strategic value most HR functions actually produce."

Strongly agree — and this is overdue Broadly agree, with caveats Disagree — AI will genuinely expand HR's role The framing is unfair / incomplete

What is the most honest thing you can say about AI's actual impact on your work so far?

People & HR

5. "The employment relationship is inherently political. Any HR framework that ignores this will fail at the moment it matters most."

Strongly agree — power is always present, rarely acknowledged Broadly agree, but 'political' overstates it Disagree — good HR depoliticises the relationship The framing assumes conflict is the default — it isn't

6. "People analytics and data-driven HR is progress. Organisations that resist it are protecting bad decisions with the cover of intuition."

Strongly agree — data is almost always better than gut Broadly agree, but the data quality problem is underestimated Disagree — people analytics is a category error applied to human judgment The framing is wrong — it's not data vs intuition, it's which questions we ask

Have you seen people analytics produce a better decision than a manager's judgment? Or the reverse? Be specific.

7. "Psychological safety and employee wellbeing are genuine strategic levers — organisations that take them seriously outperform those that don't."

Strongly agree — the evidence is robust Broadly agree, but implementation is rarely serious Disagree — managerial fashion dressed as strategy The framing is the problem — these concepts are doing too much work

8. "A great HR function is visible when things go wrong and invisible when they go right. A bad one is the opposite." React to the statement — then describe what a great HR function actually does that a bad one doesn't.

Strongly agree — the best HR is structural, not visible Broadly agree, but visibility isn't always a failure sign Disagree — great HR is proactively visible, not reactive The framing is wrong — visibility is the wrong metric entirely

Section IV

The scar tissue

The most useful intellectual positions come from experience that left a mark.

Describe a transformation or change initiative you believed in that did not work. What actually went wrong — not the official explanation? You can be as specific or as general as you're comfortable with.

What would you do differently? And do you still believe the original approach was right?

Describe a moment when you saw an HR intervention make a situation worse rather than better. What was the mechanism? Not a complaint about HR — a specific causal account of how the intervention backfired and why.

What is the thing you now believe that you would not have said publicly five years ago? What changed?

Where are you currently uncertain? What question in your field do you find genuinely difficult to answer? Not a rhetorical uncertainty — a real one.

Section V

How you read

This section calibrates how your persona challenges written work.

What makes you stop reading a business or management article in the first 60 seconds? Be specific. A word, a phrase structure, a type of claim, a register.

What makes you read something to the end even when you disagree with it?

Rate the value of these content types for you (1 = Low, 5 = Essential):

Case studies from named organisations3

Abstract frameworks and conceptual models3

References to academic research3

Quantitative data and metrics3

First-person practitioner experience3

Name one thinker that is over-cited in your field — and one that is under-cited.

Section VI

Your challenge to this work

Qual è la tua obiezione più onesta?'>The central thesis: "Most organisations fail not because of strategy or leadership, but because the design of work, roles, and structures is misaligned with what the organisation is actually trying to do."

What is your most honest objection? Not a devil's advocate position — the actual objection you would raise in a seminar room.

What would change your mind?

If you could add one voice or perspective missing from this work, what would it be?

Complete this sentence: "The question this work should be asking, but isn't, is…"

Attribution preference

Named — use my name and role in the profile Role only — archetype without my name Fully anonymous — synthesise without attribution

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A Portrait of Your Position