Lukas Rydl
Divergence Strategist / Prague / Buenos Aires
Clarity for the decisionsthat decide everything else.
I work with founders, CEOs and investors on the choices that cannot be delegated. Growth. Positioning. Transformation. New models. The moments when the next move changes the shape of everything after it.
Understand the system // know where to diverge
Hard decisions rarely suffer from too little information.
They drown in it.
Strategy is not more material. It is the discipline to identify what matters, expose the real choice, and make the consequences clear enough to act.
There is always a decision underneath the brief.
I am most useful when the question refuses to sit neatly inside one department – and the answer cannot be delegated to one either.
Growth
Where does the next phase of growth actually come from? And, just as importantly, what needs to stop to make room for it?
Positioning
What can you credibly own while categories, competitors and language quietly converge? Find the territory worth defending before the market makes everyone sound the same.
Transformation
What needs to change – and what is too valuable to break? Redesign the system without confusing movement with progress.
Alignment
How do competing perspectives become one executable direction? Make the trade-offs visible. Resolve the tension. Give the organisation something it can actually move behind.
AI & new models
Where does technology create real leverage – and where does it just make sameness cheaper? Separate genuine advantage from novelty, automation and noise.
Know the system better than anyone. Then choose exactly where to break it.
Divergence is not rebellion. It is disciplined departure: understanding which conventions create value, which only create sameness, and where one deliberate move can change the outcome.
The goal is not to be different everywhere. It is to be different where difference matters.
Less theatre. More consequence.
Frame
Separate the real question from the symptoms around it. Define what is actually being decided, by whom, and why it matters now.
Interrogate
Pressure-test the assumptions underneath the obvious answer. Look at incentives, evidence, organisational habits and the logic everyone has started treating as fact.
Diverge
Create genuinely different choices. Not three variations of the same recommendation.
Decide
Make the trade-offs impossible to hide. Clarify what each path creates, costs and rules out.
Move
Turn direction into operating reality. Priorities. Principles. Ownership. Sequence. The minimum structure required to make the choice real.
Different industries. The same strategic tension.
Across sportswear, automotive, energy, FMCG, electronics and telecommunications, I have worked around a recurring question: what should remain conventional – and where would convention become the constraint?
Selected brands and organisations I have worked with or alongside include:
2013–present
Selected situations
Growth
/ Consumer & retailReframing a growth question beyond acquisition alone – across proposition, portfolio, customer behaviour and operating priorities.
Positioning
/ Global brandsFinding a credible territory of difference in categories where products, language and communication increasingly converge.
Transformation
/ Organisations in motionConnecting strategic intent with the operating choices required to make change executable.
Technology
/ AI & new modelsSeparating practical leverage from technology theatre – and identifying where new tools genuinely change the economics, experience or operating model.
Senior strategic involvement, without another layer.
I work directly with a small number of decision-makers. The format stays intentionally flexible because consequential questions rarely arrive as clean workstreams.
Strategic intervention
A concentrated engagement around one problem worth getting right. For an inflection point, strategic choice, positioning question, organisational tension or change in direction.
Private advisory
An ongoing senior outside perspective. For founders and leaders who want independent challenge, continuity and clarity without adding another permanent internal layer.
Selected collaborations
For problems that sit between disciplines. Occasional engagements where business, brand, technology, organisation and execution need to be considered as one system.
• Availability is intentionally limited.
Strategy across the lines organisations keep apart.
My career has moved across brand strategy, business, marketing, technology and organisational change – often at the points where one discipline alone was not enough.
I have worked with global brands, growth businesses and leadership teams across different markets and stages of change.
That experience shaped a simple conviction: the hardest strategic questions are rarely solved by adding another specialist view. They are solved by seeing the whole system clearly enough to know where the leverage is.
Today I work independently with founders, CEOs, investors and senior teams on questions where the choice matters more than the volume of analysis around it.
Prague / Buenos Aires / Internationally
The point is not to make strategy look intelligent. It is to make the next decision clearer.
If the decision matters, so does the conversation.
Tell me what you are trying to resolve. It does not need to be a polished brief, defined workstream or presentation first.