Jonas Schneider · Advisory practice for companies and NGOs

Organisations are usually sitting on more than they are currently using.

Eight places where good ones get stuck. Do any of them sound familiar?

Great people, a strong product, a clear mission, and still the output doesn't match what the organisation should be capable of. Something is quietly getting in the way, and it's rarely the thing people name first.

New leadership, a new phase of growth, a restructuring, a mission reset. The structure and the habits that got the organisation here were right for that chapter, but they aren't built for the next one. The window to get ahead of it is usually shorter than it looks.

The board expects results. The team expects direction. And when the calls get difficult, there are surprisingly few people to think them through with. Sometimes you don't need another opinion. You need someone to challenge or fully back the one you already have.

More opportunities worth pursuing than people and hours to pursue them. Choosing the priorities is rarely the hard part. Dropping the rest is, because everything on the list has someone behind it. Often several.

What worked for years, sometimes decades, has lost its grip. Regulation has hardened what can be said, audiences are more sceptical, and boards and funders are asking for measurable results rather than intent. The organisation doesn't want to go quiet. It just doesn't yet know how to speak and act with force in this new environment. Inside, some of that reads as a betrayal of what it was founded to be.

The company is mission-driven, and it shows: the supply chain is cleaner, the reporting is honest, the internal work is genuinely good. Yet set against the scale of the problem, it feels as if it barely registers. That is not a failure of effort. It is the limit of what any organisation can change inside its own walls. The next lever sits outside them: in changing the rules, and in working with others. Almost nobody solves problems this size alone, and most organisations are more capable of it than they believe.

The ambition is real and the potential is there. What's missing is the next step. When every direction is open and none is obviously wrong, choosing gets harder, and the wrong move costs more than it looks.

Strong conviction, limited runway. Every hire, every market choice, every decision about money costs time the founders don't have. What helps here is someone who has actually built lean before.

Different situations. Usually the same thing underneath.

Priorities multiply. Old structures outlive their purpose. Decisions slow down. People read the strategy differently. And when the problem feels urgent, the instinct is to do everything at once, which dilutes the work.

Organisations working on problems bigger than they are carry an extra weight too: the feeling that nothing they do is ever enough, which is more paralysing than motivating.

None of it is anyone's fault, and all of it is hard to see from inside. Finding it is usually the first job.

If you recognise any of this, let's talk.

I've sat in your chair.

My first company at 26. Then almost ten years founding and running a multinational fashion company, and three and a half leading a European climate NGO. I know what a plan looks like from the side that has to deliver it.

I take your goal seriously enough to question it.Sometimes what you really want sits behind the goal you name. Sometimes your route won't get you there, because something else has to come first. Working that out matters most at the start, and it never looks the same twice. You bring your ideas, I bring mine, and more often than not we find better ones together. We end up working towards what you truly want, and what we both believe can be achieved.
I work at every level.The CEO in the morning, the people closest to execution in the afternoon. I usually learn as much from the second conversation as from the first, because the people doing the work know which parts will hold in practice and which only work on paper.
I'm a critical optimist.Not optimism that ignores reality, not criticism that makes progress feel impossible. Organisations move when the people inside believe it's possible, and my job is to build that belief out of what is actually there.
I work across worlds, and beyond your walls.I've moved between creative and commercial, NGOs and business, policy and operations. I have never been a designer, a lawyer or an engineer, but I speak their languages. When the next step depends on people outside the organisation, I go there too: alliances, advocacy, coalitions.

I'm a builder who can think strategically and a strategist who can build.

What's different afterwards

The direction is clear enough that people act on it without checking, and everyone can explain it in their own words. People know what the organisation is doing and why. They also know what it has decided not to do.

This means doing fewer things, better. Decisions that used to stall get made. And what was already there starts to compound.

There is usually some pride in it too, because the people who made it happen know it was theirs.

Twenty years of doing it, not just advising on it.

Different industries, the same pattern: real potential, turned into results that lasted.

Protect Our Winters Europe

Executive Director, three and a half years

Inherited ten national chapters with little shared direction. Governance was the obvious problem, but it soon became clear it could only be fixed once there was trust across the network. So we started by campaigning together internationally and finding strength in numbers, with important wins to share. Common governance followed, and with it a coordinated European movement and, in time, a permanent presence in Brussels. Later came Brand Advocacy Day, bringing outdoor brands from Patagonia, Decathlon and Salomon to small independent labels all the way into the European Parliament. Grew the budget by nearly half and held it through an industry downturn, while increasing support to the chapters and building reserves of more than four months' running costs.

ANONYME designers

Founder and CEO, almost ten years

A beautiful collection, with no route to market. Turned it into a brand and built the company around it: a profitable multinational with offices in Barcelona, Rome, Hong Kong and Guangzhou, selling in 18 countries, from Japan and China to the UK, France, Germany and the US. Alongside running the company, founded and ran the Hong Kong and China operations and co-directed the Italian branch. Bootstrapped, with a six-figure profit already in the first year, which grew every year to several times that. Sold my stake, and stayed long enough to see the handover through.

Lavand

Consultant, four years embedded

A small Madrid company in crisis: strong products, the wrong business model. The brief was to sell more and showcase at the best trade shows. What it needed to get there was a brand to open new doors, so we created two new labels together with the owner and led their international expansion across three continents. 55 showrooms, 3,500+ points of sale. Revenue and profit both grew more than tenfold, reaching several million euros a year in operating profit.

Chilliwep S.L.

The practice I have kept coming back to since 2006

It started with fashion companies expanding beyond their home market, and widened quickly into strategy, growth, and building the teams and structures to sustain it. More than 50 clients since, from start-ups to stock-listed companies, among them Nina Ricci, Christian Lacroix, SKFK, Lenzing AG and the Generalitat de Catalunya, and most recently Barcelona Digital Nomads.

Writing Suston Magazine · October 2026 You've done the work. Now change the rules Why the brands doing the most on their own footprint are often the first to find its limits, and why the next lever sits outside the company. Read on Suston →

“Jonas is not only an extraordinary force of energy and enthusiasm, he also brings the organization, tools, and drive to enable really remarkable successes. I was Vice President of the Board of POW Europe, responsible for oversight of the executive director. He developed opportunities with a diverse array of allies, from our industry partners to Members of European Parliament. In the years Jonas has been with POW Europe, he has moved the organization forward to become a stable, steady and impactful organization with a strong backing.”
Megan AndersonVice President of the Board, Protect Our Winters Europe

“He's smart and creative, and sensitive when it's time to navigate internal politics. His competence has allowed our org to grow; he's exponentially increased cohesion within our regional chapters and increased focus. I'd work with him again in a heartbeat.”
Tom Wilson-NorthBoard member, Protect Our Winters Europe · European Marketing Manager, Nidecker Snowboards

“I was in the middle of unwinding a business partnership that had gone wrong, with money tied up and a community watching. Jonas helped me think clearly when I couldn't. He was honest with me about what was realistic, stayed with it over months rather than just handing me advice, and I came out of it without damage to the community I'd spent years building.”
Viktor VincejFounder, Barcelona Digital Nomads

“I experienced Jonas Schneider in our business collaboration as a respectful, empathetic and authentic team leader. He is a forward-thinking, well-grounded economist whose expertise also shows in his thinking as a sustainability-minded fashion analyst.”
Susanne CarlsEuropean Application & Business Development Manager, Lenzing Group

“I worked with Jonas for two years on the creation of a new brand. He is a proactive and business-focused person; he knows how to listen to the customer and identify their needs. He also has great organizational and team management skills.”
Vladimiro CipollaLavand and ANONYME designers

It starts with a conversation, and it lasts as long as it is useful.

Three steps, and one thing I am not.

A conversation first.About an hour. It costs nothing and it's the only way to know whether there's a fit.Book a time →
Then usually a focused piece of work.A few days over two to four weeks, spent understanding the situation properly, ending with a clear view of what to do and the energy to start. AI speeds up the groundwork, so more of our time goes into judgement.
Then we build the way forward together.An embedded engagement that runs for several months, sometimes longer. A retainer with one leader through a critical period. It lasts only as long as it is useful.

What I'm not

A one-off workshop facilitator, a project manager, someone who arrives with a method looking for a problem, or a coach in the formal sense. If a workshop is the right way to start, it becomes the beginning of the work, not the whole of it.

Jonas

I'm Swiss, based in Barcelona, and I've spent twenty years moving between consulting, entrepreneurship and leadership.

Built my own fashion brand and built brands for others. Closed one of my own after four years, later than I should have. Set up companies and supply chains across Europe and Asia. Taught at IED Barcelona and mentored young designers at a local incubator. Took my first consulting mandate in 2006 and have come back to the work between every chapter since. Invested as an angel in early-stage climate tech, including companies that didn't work.

Most of that was building companies. The last chapter, at POW, was different: an organisation whose whole purpose was to change something bigger than itself. What I know now sits in the overlap, and that is what this practice is for.

Jonas Schneider on a panel at the European Parliament — European Parliament, Brussels

Many advisors help you think. I think with you, and I help make it happen.