Mechanisms
The practices and structure we help to install so change can happen. Not a programme running on top of the day job, but the thing that makes a different way of working possible every day.
Leadership · Organisation · AI
We make bosses better
…and organizations more coherent: business focused, people centric, tech enabled.
Prisma Insights is a small firm near Munich. We work with leaders in German and English, mostly in the DACH region. We build the mechanisms and design the practices that help leaders make a difference, every day.
When to call us* Mika Schmitz, 7 years old, when asked what his father does.
Prisma Insights GmbH · Pöcking, Germany
What we do
Change that survives the day job
Practices & habits
What people do differently once the mechanism is in. Sustainable habit-building turns a one-off change into a durable one. It is what we have specialised in.
Whole system
One role, one leader, one team at a time, never in isolation. The individual first, designed in the context of the whole, so every single piece lifts the organisation.
Prisma principles
Back to Human
Lead with empathy. Listen deeply. Speak your truth.
Go Beyond
Challenge the norm. Share bold ideas. Evolve every day.
Seek Simplicity
Focus on what matters. Communicate clearly. Be pragmatic.
When to call us
We work at the moment of transition
Most change work runs on a calendar and sits next to the day job, so it has to be defended against the day job. We start when something is already moving anyway. At that moment nobody is downgraded, nobody has to give anything up, and nobody has to defend the old way. That is why what we build tends to stay.
“I need a new job. Now what?”
Transition Concierge. Somebody is leaving, arriving, or quietly looking. The window is a few weeks and there is no second run at it. We work for the person, not the employer.
“We agreed that on Tuesday. It was gone by Thursday.”
Leadership Coherence. A team at the top, or an old one that keeps undoing its own decisions. We work on it over several months, build skills, deepen maturity and shape the context.
“Just post the same one again.”
Stellendesign. A chair is empty. For a few weeks nobody owns the old cut of the job, so it can be rebuilt without a fight. Three to four weeks, then 90 days.
- Leadership Operating System
- We measure context, maturity and skills. For one leader or a whole organisation.
- 20+ experts
- Available worldwide when a job needs them.
- Partner network
- Tech, video, legal, global and local mobility, recruiting and marketing.
We find out what is going on before we say what to do.
One role, one leader, one team at a time.
Every piece is built so the whole company moves with it.
Moment 1 · A leader moves
Transition Concierge
We have sat on the other side
What it is
We help senior leaders through a job change. Division heads up to board members. Everything is confidential, and we work for you, not for your employer. You book each piece on its own.
Changing jobs at your level is a job in itself, and you get very little practice at it. Your CV never had to get past a first screen. And getting the offer is not the same as doing well in the role.
“What am I actually worth outside?”
You are not leaving. You want to know what the market makes of you before you decide anything. A positioning check, in writing within ten days: what your profile triggers, and what has to change.
“The talks have started. I have only ever done this from the other side.”
Exit terms, liability and what you say to whom, sorted before you sign. Then a profile that gets past a first screen, and a plan for the fifty people who need to know you exist.
“I have the role. Everyone wants to brief me first.”
In week one you need the most information and have the least room to act. We map the people you depend on, including the ones who did not want you, and build the plan.
- We have made these decisions from the employer side, including as labour director for 17,000 people.
- No reporting line to your employer. Not outplacement your company pays for. We do not place people and we do not promise interviews.
- Fixed scope, in writing, before we start.
Transition Concierge · with Stepters ConsultingAsk about this
Moment 2 · A top team does not hold
Leadership Coherence
We start where the check points
What it is
We work with the team at the top so that they act as one team, loyal to peers over their direct reports. It runs over several months and uses your real decisions and your real meetings. It is not a workshop and it does not end with a certificate.
Your leadership team agrees something in the meeting. Then it gets undone in the corridor, and everybody below notices. At this level your team is the people sitting next to you, not the people reporting to you. That takes months to change.
Who decides what. How often you meet. What the goals are. And how people get paid and rewarded. Most of what looks like a people problem at this level is sitting here. This is where we start with a board, because a board can change its own rules.
What can be learned. Sometimes the basic craft is simply missing: handing work over, setting priorities, saying the hard thing to a peer. This is where we start one level down. That level does not set its own rules, so we work with their bosses at the same time.
How the team handles conflict, responsibility and trust. And whether each person feels loyal to their own area first, or to this table. Sometimes we start here, so the team sees for itself that the rules have to change before it changes them.
- A check first. Then a kick-off, then real work between the sessions, then support when something big comes up. We measure again after 3, 6 and 12 months.
- The check tells us the order of work. It is not a personality test. If you want a validated test, we use a known one.
- We say no if your people do not really depend on each other, or if you are not willing to change how you work yourself.
Leadership Coherence · top teams and the level belowAsk about this
Moment 3 · A job opens
Stellendesign
One job opens. A better one comes back.
What it is
You get a rebuilt job, a test version of an AI agent if one makes sense, and proof that people with the new profile exist in your market. Then we make sure it delivers value.
An open job costs about €624 a day, and skilled jobs in Germany stay open 140 to 183 days. Fill it the usual way and you pay a recruiter about 27.5% of the first year salary for the same job that was written years ago.
- A 30 minute call. We say yes or no.
- We take the job apart into tasks, handovers and decisions.
- The team marks its own tasks against our framework.
- We sort every task, using the five answers.
- We rebuild the job, check the labour market, and the manager signs off.
- It stops.
- It gets simpler.
- It moves to someone else.
- A tool you already have does it.
- We build an agent.
Building an agent is the last answer, not the first. A check that ends with nothing to build is a full result, and you have it in week three.
The new setup goes live. We stay 60 days while people get used to it, then give a verdict on day 90. We measure on a number the function already reports, taken from system data. We never report per-person usage to a manager. The team marks its own work. That is why they hand over more of it.
- Filling the job 16 days sooner: about €10,000, once.
- Work moved to other people: about €8,000 a year.
- A lower grade, if you choose it: another €8,000 a year.
- The second job in the same family costs less, because most of the thinking is done. From job nine one of your own people can run it.
Stellendesign · BAFA funding possible for the Stellen-CheckAsk about this
Who you get
People of Prisma
You work with the people you meet.
Andreas Schmitz
Founder, owner & executive operator
Andreas is one of the DACH region’s most experienced HR strategists for complex corporate transformations. His perspective comes from 25 years of leading at the highest level across Silicon Valley technology, billion-euro healthcare organisations and agile start-ups.
Operating track record
- Roche Germany · 2013–2022
- As Managing Director HR and Labour Director, he led a 300-person HR organisation with a €44 million budget and held responsibility for the HR strategy of 17,000 employees. Earlier, he supported the growth of the Penzberg biotechnology site from 4,000 to more than 6,000 people. During his tenure, Roche reached number one in the Glassdoor employer ranking.
- SAP, Silicon Valley · 2009–2011
- Based in Palo Alto, he advised global top management in Technology & Innovation on organisation design as a Global HR Business Partner.
- NanoTemper Technologies · 2022–2023
- As Chief People Officer, he brought agile growth structures into an innovative mid-sized biotechnology company.
Role at Prisma
Andreas leads Prisma’s enterprise network and brings the employer-side operating judgement behind the work. He also scaled the HR software company B&H Digital, maker of the TransFair Navigator, as CEO.
Rossella Barilli
Co-founder & executive transformation consultant
Rossella is the psychological and conceptual heart of Prisma Insights. A work and organisational psychologist, she brings more than ten years of international experience in large-scale culture change and global leadership programmes.
Operating track record
- International transformation consulting
- Before co-founding Prisma Insights, she designed and led complex large-group events, culture-development programmes and restructuring support for a leading international transformation consultancy.
- Healthcare leadership interface
- For several years, she supported leadership teams in one of the world’s leading diagnostics and pharmaceutical groups through cross-border change processes.
- International advisory board · March 2025
- She led the development of Prisma’s advisory board and brought global experts including Professor Denise Rousseau of Carnegie Mellon University and HR-tech serial founder Benjamin Visser into the group.
Role at Prisma
Rossella owns journey and programme design. She turns research from systems and organisational psychology into practical work, including Prisma’s proprietary measurement approaches such as the Organizational Intelligence System for assessing top-team maturity.
Niklas “Nik” Frewel
Co-founder, partner & leadership architect
Nik connects rigorous academic research with international executive practice. As an organisational psychologist and certified Enterprise Agile Coach, he works where strategic management meets measurable behavioural change in leadership teams.
Operating track record
- International management experience
- He brings more than a decade of consulting practice across Europe. As an elected member of the management team at global transformation consultancy atrain GmbH, he led strategic initiatives and crisis management.
- Academic foundation
- Alongside an international double-degree MSc in organisational psychology from the universities of Valencia and Bologna, he is pursuing a doctorate in Strategic Management at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and teaches at public universities.
- Assessment expertise
- He has designed, led and evaluated well over 100 assessment centres for senior executives and understands the decision logic behind leadership appointments in detail.
Role at Prisma
Nik is the architect behind Prisma’s Leadership Operating System. His speciality is sustainable habit building: anchoring new leadership behaviours after restructuring and supporting the employees who remain through change. He also hosts the Prisma podcast “Dare to Evolve”.
And behind them
Led a company builder and innovation center. Now runs the company day to day: processes, systems and people planning.
Board and COO experience at a global medical technology company. Scaling, digital, and seven acquisitions in three years.
Thirty years in global leadership teams in life sciences. Led total rewards transformations and post-merger work.
Plus more than twenty experts we can call on, in German and English.
Diagnostics, leadership development, organisation design, role design and AI agents, HR transformation.
Pharma, biotech and life sciences, medical technology, software, automotive, tech industry and mid-sized PE backed family firms.
Legal, tax, mobility, recruiting, tech and design partners. Tested by us.