Overview
Executive Summary
The picture
We interviewed 8 employees selected together with the company's CEO, each with a specific role and level of seniority, to get a precise picture of the relationships. The interviews were conducted using the Tacita method: guided conversations designed to surface tacit knowledge, meaning the behaviors, decision-making dynamics and relational patterns that don't appear in reports, aren't said in meetings and often aren't even conscious to the people enacting them.
Across the eight interviews, what emerges is an organization with solid execution skills but a significant gap between the way people work and the way the company would like them to work. The problem isn't technical competence, it's the mental model: the organization reacts well to emergencies but doesn't anticipate them, solves problems but doesn't prevent them, executes precisely but struggles to take the initiative.
To bring these dynamics out, we simulated complex scenarios tied to the company's context and typical activities, prompting reasoning at a higher level than daily routine. We didn't ask people what they think of themselves: we observed how they reason when the ground is uncertain.
Where the value sits
Two senior profiles, Ricci and Landi, show the gap can be closed. When ownership and systems thinking come together, the score goes above the 7.5 threshold. The potential is there; the challenge is making it collective.
Main risk
Distributed ownership is the largest gap, at 3,5 points. If decisions keep concentrating on the senior profiles, the team will never develop autonomy. The risk is structural, not individual.
Methodology: what Tacita brought to the surface
The Tacita method rests on one principle: the most important skills can't be measured with questionnaires. They are observed when people face ambiguous situations, make decisions under pressure, negotiate conflicting priorities. That's why we built scenarios calibrated on the company's context, not generic tests.
Each interview followed three phases: contextualization (understanding how the person experiences their role), simulation (scenarios that activate the four dimensions), reflection (metacognition on how they reasoned). The Tacita agent guided each phase, recording not only the answers but the decision patterns, the hesitations, the blind spots.
What we captured
Unwritten rules, informal hierarchies, unconscious decision-making habits, dynamics of trust and delegation that no survey could ever pick up.
What a questionnaire doesn't capture
The difference between “I know what I should do” and “I actually do it”. Tacita interviews are designed to observe the second, not the first.
In short
The organization has professionals who are solid at execution. The main gap concerns the shift from reactive execution to proactive construction: making decisions, anticipating problems, connecting the dots between departments. The quick actions have to redistribute ownership. The long work is turning anticipation into culture.
This isn't a competence problem. It's a permission problem: the system has never asked people to think beyond their own perimeter. When we did ask, in several cases they proved able to.
Patterns that emerged
What we observed across the board
Five recurring patterns emerge from the individual data. They aren't hypotheses: they are dynamics we saw repeat in at least 5 of the 8 interviews.
The missing permission
Six people out of eight showed decision-making ability beyond what they exercise day to day. The problem isn't talent, it's context: nobody has ever told them “you decide”. Ownership isn't taught, it's authorized.
The invisible silo effect
No department has a complete map of the impact of its actions on the others. Information moves vertically but almost never horizontally. Two people described the same problem without knowing the other was living it too.
The knowledge that doesn't transfer
There is a body of procedural and relational know-how that lives in individual heads. When a senior person is away, the department slows down. Not because the others are incompetent, but because there is no structured system for handing knowledge on.
The communication that doesn't travel upward
The junior profiles have opinions, doubts and sometimes solutions. They don't voice them. The reason isn't fear, it's the absence of a space where doing so is seen as useful. Bottom-up communication is switched off for want of a format, not of willingness.
Reactive adaptability
The team is surprisingly resilient in a crisis. But that same ability hides a problem: it adapts to what happens, not to what might happen. Anticipation is the least-exercised muscle in the whole organization.
The positive signal
In three interviews, faced with scenarios that required systems thinking, people who don't exercise it day to day proved able to when the scenario explicitly demanded it. The potential is real. What's needed is a system that activates it rather than assuming it.
The overall view
The four dimensions of mindset
Each dimension was assessed through simulated scenarios, not self-assessments. The scores reflect the behavior observed during the Tacita interviews, not personal perception.
Radar
Overall profile vs Target
Scores by dimension vs reference points
Comparison table
Every person, every dimension
An overall view that makes it quick to compare individual scores. Sorted by descending average.
Diagnosis
What is really going on
The Tacita interviews surfaced four structural dynamics. These aren't individual problems: they are organizational habits that reinforce themselves.
1. Ownership concentrated in a few hands
Decisions gravitate toward 2 or 3 senior figures. The rest of the team waits for validation even on operational choices. The issue isn't trust, it's an organizational habit that has never been questioned.
“I usually wait for someone to tell me what to do, even when I'd actually already know the answer.”
2. Operational silos
Each department knows its own perimeter but not the impact of its actions on the others. Information circulates very little laterally. Systems thinking stays confined to the more mature profiles.
“I didn't know that when I deliver late, a bottleneck forms downstream that involves three people.”
3. Unstructured learning
People learn by osmosis, not by design. There are no retrospectives, no sharing of mistakes and no orderly transfer of knowledge. Learning stays individual and intermittent.
“When Marco isn't here, we all slow down. Not because we don't know how, but because we don't know what to prioritize.”
4. Top-down communication
Influence flows almost exclusively downward. Junior profiles rarely propose and rarely disagree. Peer-to-peer communication remains too weak.
“Sometimes I see a problem, but I don't know whether it's my place to raise it. So I wait.”
Levers
Where to act
The actions are ordered by impact and feasibility. Quick wins build confidence in the change; structural actions make it irreversible.
Quick Wins · 0–3 months
Identify decisions that are centralized today and assign them to the people who carry them out. Clear criteria and freedom to make mistakes. The objective isn't efficiency: it's shifting the locus of control.
30 minutes, 3 questions: what worked, what didn't, what we change. No hierarchy in the format.
Each month, one person in a different department. No classroom training, only observation and questions. It builds systems thinking through exposure.
Neri gathers valuable information from customers that never reaches the people designing the product. A structured weekly report closes the most immediate gap.
Structural · 3–12 months
Define in writing who decides what and at which level. Remove the ambiguity that produces dependence.
Junior profiles bring digital skills and fresh perspectives to senior colleagues. Bidirectional by design.
Make it visible how one department's actions affect the others. Transparency has to become infrastructure.
Critical know-how has to come out of individual heads. Tacita can continue as a tool for periodically capturing organizational knowledge.
By department
Comparison across departments
Three teams, three very different maturity profiles. The radar overlays the patterns to highlight where each department diverges from the target and from the others.
Scores by department
Analysis
The profile of each department
The Tacita interviews reveal not only the scores but the internal dynamics: who pulls, who holds back, where potential stays unexpressed and why.
Direct comparison
Departments side by side
The averages by dimension, side by side. The gap column shows the distance from the ideal target.
Inter-department dynamics
What happens between departments
The interviews surfaced specific friction in the handovers between teams. Dynamics invisible from above, but daily for the people living them.
Sales → Operations
The sales team, driven by the will to close, promises timelines and customizations the operations team struggles to sustain. The friction isn't personal: it's structural. There is no shared process for validating promises.
Observed impact
Operations compensates with overtime and micro-adjustments, absorbing the cost without making it visible. The pressure becomes chronic.
Product → Sales
The product evolves, but information about new features reaches sales late or incompletely. People sell what they know, not what exists. The unsold potential is a hidden cost.
Opportunity
Neri has the right instincts to act as a bridge. What's needed is a format, not a different person.
The common pattern
The inter-department frictions all share the same root: an absence of mutual visibility. Each team optimizes its own output without seeing the downstream impact. This isn't organizational selfishness: it's a system that doesn't make dependencies visible. The answer isn't more generic communication, but transparency infrastructure.
Individual profiles
Individual analysis
Select a profile to explore scores, gaps by dimension, strengths, areas for attention, a narrative summary and a development suggestion. Every assessment comes from direct observation during the Tacita interviews.
Select a person from the menu
8 profiles · 3 departments · 4 dimensions
Each profile includes an individual radar, a breakdown by dimension, strengths, areas for development, a qualitative summary and a recommended action.