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Progress is not escaping forward

It is the discipline of returning to the same questions with greater clarity and less self-deception.

Reframing reality under pressure

I don't offer happiness. I offer truth with consequences.

I didn’t intend to become a coach. In fact, I’m deeply skeptical of coaching as it’s usually practiced. Too much reassurance. Too many borrowed frameworks. Too much effort spent helping people feel better inside lives that no longer fit.

What I found myself doing, again and again, was the opposite. Questioning people's assumptions. Dissecting inconsistent beliefs. Burning false deities. Making things temporarily worse so they could eventually become honest.

I’ve lived in enough contradictory worlds to know that simple stories don’t survive contact with reality. Psychology and philosophy taught me how minds fracture and rebuild. Journalism and war zones taught me what fear, power, and moral ambiguity actually look like. Corporate leadership taught me how decisions are really made, and how often nobody tells the truth about it.

I am not necessarily smarter than the people who come to me. I’ve just driven more roads, at higher speed, and paid for the crashes long enough to recognize where they lead.

Lateral Coach exists for people who already sense that their old scripts no longer work, and who are willing to face what comes after the illusions break.

I don’t offer happiness. I offer clarity and freedom of choice. Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is not transcendence. Sometimes it’s the train that's coming. Either way, I won’t lie to you about it.

If you are feeling the glitches in your personal or professional life and looking to reboot your operating system, to be clearer and sharper, I might be able to help.

If you are looking for a shoulder to cry on about being a victim, I recommend a traditional coach who will empathize and empower you.

I am here to help you see things clearly, decide where you want to go, and do things that will lead you in that direction.

Full disclaimer: be careful what you wish for.

My fees will be the least of the prices you will pay.

Abstract digital art of a face made from white interconnected lines on black.

How we will work together

I am not here to make you comfortable. I am here to make you clear.

Lateral Coach exists for people who already sense their lives no longer fit, and who are willing to face what comes after reality is recognized. They don't need inspiration. They need alignment, clarity and action.

I work with people whose lives still function.

And with others whose lives have come apart.

The distance between those two states is smaller than most like to believe.

My Approach

I don’t coach from theory. I coach from experience.

There is no program. There is a conversation that goes where others avoid going.

I don’t separate professional and personal reality. Neither does life.
I don’t treat you as a “case”. You’re a system with history.
I recognize patterns under pressure because I have lived them, not read about them.
I don’t promise transformation. I work toward coherence.
I map wills: alignment by force and direction, not wishful thinking.
I focus on narrative discipline: language and meaning that survives reality, not just poetic self-talk.

There are rules:

no motivational theatre
no pretending constraints don’t exist
no hiding behind clever language

We deal in truth, choice, and consequence.

What this is not

This is not therapy.
This is not mentoring.
This is not inspiration.

I will not:

normalize what is corrosive
help you tolerate a life you’ve outgrown
decorate avoidance with euphemisms

If you want comfort, this will disappoint you.

Who this is for

Clarity

Some people arrive here because something exploded. Others because nothing did.

They are senior executives, founders, operators. Their careers are defensible. Their reputations intact. Their calendars full. The organizations they lead still perform. But momentum has thinned. Curiosity has dulled. Progress has flattened into maintenance. The work no longer stretches. The days repeat themselves with minor variations.

This is not burnout. Burnout implies depletion. This is stagnation, corporate and personal, reinforcing each other quietly.

They built something. A company, a role, a way of being valuable. It worked. And over time, it hardened into structure. The obligations multiplied. The room for movement narrowed. Leaving feels irresponsible. Staying feels dishonest. They are respected, and constrained. Trapped not by failure, but by competence.

Others arrive from the opposite direction.

They fell off the train. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes because the system decided they no longer fit. A restructuring. A refusal. A moral or strategic disagreement that could not be absorbed. Suddenly the scaffolding disappears. Status, predictability, income, identity all dissolve at once.

What follows is not freedom.

It is free fall.

This is not a career problem. It is a philosophical, existential, economic, and survival problem rolled into one.

I understand both conditions because I have lived across them. I studied psychology and philosophy before I learned how power behaves under pressure. I worked as a journalist and war correspondent in Rwanda, where moral clarity was not theoretical and the cost of decisions was measured in lives. I have also spent decades inside corporate systems, from startups to Big Four firms, from basements to Fifth Avenue boardrooms, where language is polished and consequences are deferred.

Clarity, in this work, is not insight. Most of the people I work with are already insightful. It is coherence. It is separating who you are from the roles you inhabited, or were expelled from. It is understanding which parts of your former life were essential and which were adaptive. It is reconstructing a core identity that can act again without pretending the past did not happen.

Some redesign the structure they are in.

Others blow it up and rebuild one from the ground up.

Both begin with the same refusal: to stop lying to yourself about who you are now.

Meaning

For others, the problem is not identity but meaning.

Some arrive with the feeling that life is absurd. Others because they believed too deeply that it was not. They were idealists. Principled. Mission-driven. They trusted institutions. They believed in causes. They assumed that doing the right thing, consistently and visibly, would eventually make sense of the world.

Then they watched values turn into branding. Ethics into slide decks. ESG and DEI into reputational shields. NGOs into stages where virtue is performed while impact remains elusive. The language grew louder as the results thinned.

This is not cynicism. It is moral exhaustion.

I have encountered this from positions that do not fit clean narratives. I have been shot at in Zodiacs by fishing trawlers while working alongside Greenpeace. I have advised global social entrepreneurship networks like Ashoka, where idealism meets organizational reality. I have worked with UNHCR and Doctors Without Borders in African war zones, where suffering is not abstract and impact cannot be staged.

Those experiences teach a blunt lesson: meaning does not survive on intention alone.

People who come to me are not looking for purity. They have outgrown that. They want their actions to make sense without self-deception. They want ethics that survive trade-offs. Purpose that holds under pressure. Impact that does not require pretending the world is simpler than it is.

Meaning, here, is not comfort.

It is direction.

The work is to strip away false narratives without collapsing into nihilism. To accept the absurd without surrendering agency. To design action that matters precisely because it acknowledges friction, power, and cost. And to build meaning not only into great missions but into the smallest details of life.

Action

And then there are those for whom clarity and meaning are already in place.

What they need is action.

Some arrive because stagnation has become intolerable. The organization still performs, but the curve has flattened. Innovation has slowed. The leader still functions, but something essential has gone static. Progress no longer compounds.

Others reach out because they see what few are willing to say aloud. The company is not broken, but it is aging. Markets are shifting. Structures that once enabled growth are now preserving comfort. Without change, the future is not collapse but a long, polite decline.

And then there are those driven by acceleration.

They are not stuck. They are not afraid. They are already moving. Building. Launching. Scaling. They know the window is narrow and the stakes asymmetric. They do not need permission. They need perspective from someone who has done this before and understands what speed actually costs.

I have taken an environmental-technology company from zero to a hundred-million valuation in under two years, operating across three continents, where capital, execution, and narrative had to move together or fail. I have helped transform the global media and commercial project around Real Madrid during the Beckham era, when growth was not incremental and visibility was unforgiving. I have worked with EY to reframe how value itself is articulated through digital channels, not as decoration but as a redefinition of relevance.

Those experiences teach another uncomfortable truth: real growth is violent to inertia.

It breaks habits. Disrupts careers. Invalidates structures that still look competent. Forces decisions that cannot be postponed without cost. And that cost is always paid by someone.

I do not help leaders avoid it. I help them see it clearly and choose it deliberately.

I strip away orthodox business language and expose the real dynamics underneath: power, fear, incentives, avoidance. I make visible what growth will demand, not just from the company, but from the person leading it.

Because stagnation is not neutral.

It is decay with better manners.

And growth, when it is real, does not just transform organizations.

It transforms or destroys the people who dare to lead them through it.

The format

Introductory Meeting (30 minutes)

The introductory meeting is free because it’s not a sales call and it’s not a therapy session. It’s a reality check. We use it to see whether there’s something real to work on and whether I’m the right person to touch it. I listen fast, cut through noise faster, and tell you what I see without cushioning it. No promises, no empowerment rituals, no next-steps choreography. Either there’s a problem worth solving and the conditions to act, or there isn’t. Clarity first. Everything else is optional.

Discovery Session (60 minutes)

One conversation. No warm-up theatre.

We map what’s actually happening in your life and work.

Not the narrative. The mechanics.

We map your reality: constraints, patterns, contradictions, incentives.

You leave with a clean problem statement

and one uncomfortable, viable direction.

Sprint (4 weeks)

Weekly 60 minute sessions.

Focused on identifying patterns and making decisions.

Uncomfortable but constructive.

Meaningful shifts implemented, not endlessly discussed.

Retainer (3 months)

Bi weekly 60 minute sessions.

For people and companies in transition, conflict, negotiation, or structural change.

For founders/executives in active negotiations, turnarounds, board pressure, or transitions.

For Individuals setting out on life changing paths.

I act as an external thinking partner when stakes are high and consequences real.

We work in short, focused sequences.

Always anchored in reality.

Always aimed at action.

I stay close enough to be useful.

Distant enough to remain honest.

Group Coaching (4 hours)

Group sessions, here, are not a seminar.

It’s not a safe circle.

It’s not collective therapy dressed up as leadership development.

These sessions are for small groups of senior operators, founders, and leaders who already carry weight and want to think better under it. The value isn’t the group dynamic. It’s the shared exposure.

People hearing themselves think out loud in front of others who won’t collude, posture, or perform.

I use the group as pressure, not comfort. As a way to surface blind spots faster, challenge borrowed narratives, and force precision in thinking and language.

What emerges isn’t consensus. It’s clarity.

Often uncomfortable. Always useful.

Group work makes sense when the questions are structural, ethical, or strategic, and when learning accelerates by watching others confront versions of the same illusion. It’s not about bonding. It’s about seeing more clearly, faster, and leaving with decisions you can no longer avoid.

If you’re looking for a retreat, look elsewhere.

Results

Clarity aligns how you live with who you are.

Action turns insight into consequence.

Meaning makes sense of action in an absurd world.

Most people stall because they try to solve one without confronting the others.

This work doesn’t.

Why I might be able to help you

Michael Novack Personal and Professional Development Coach and Advisor

My experience

I didn’t come to this practice through certification or consensus. I came through exposure. Through psychology and philosophy first, then through places where theory collapses fast. I reported from Rwanda as a war correspondent, where moral clarity wasn't optional and consequences arrived immediately. I’ve been at sea with Greenpeace under fire, and on the ground with UNHCR and Doctors Without Borders in African war zones, where suffering isn’t abstract and impact can’t be staged. I’ve also lived inside power and performance: scaling companies from nothing, taking an environmental tech business to a €100M valuation across three continents in under two years, reshaping Real Madrid’s global media engine during the Beckham era, and helping EY rethink how value itself is articulated in a digital world. I’ve moved between fracture and control, ideals and incentives, basements and boardrooms. That’s why I don’t coach from theory, best practice, or borrowed frameworks. I work from lived collision, hard decisions, and the kind of clarity that only shows up after illusions break.

A group of men with tribal attire and a man holding a microphone outdoors.

My philosophy

Clarity is not something I theorize about. It is something I’ve had to earn under pressure. My hunger for learning has spanned a divergent arc from war correspondent in Rwanda to CEO on 5th Avenue, paying dearly for each lesson. I was trained as a psychologist and a philosopher, and went looking for answers where humans have always looked for them: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, finally Taoism and Zen. I walked India, lived in an ashram in Haridwar, crossed Tibet, and I did find peace there. Then I left it behind. Because stillness taught me serenity, but movement taught me truth, not in a mystical, absolute, sense, in an deeper understanding of reality.

Six people, including footballers in Real Madrid tracksuits, holding bouquets at an event.

The zen of violence

What I practice now is what I call the "zen of violence": the state of balance that appears not in aggression, but in presence. When life outruns thought and only mastery remains. When instinct, discipline, experience, and judgment collapse into a single act. There is no room for doubt, ego, or narrative. Only alignment. I meet that state at the edge: in extreme sports, martial arts, skiing, racing motorcycles and cars, in teams under stress, in relationships at breaking points, rescuing companies and people when failure has consequences, sometimes lethal ones, often existential. Occasionally it shows up in a single, unforgiving conversation. This is where clarity is forged, not discussed. Not in reflection, but in collision. I’ve carried one sentence like a blade since I learned to reason, and it still cuts clean:

“No man is free who is not a master of himself.” — Epictetus.

Three people in a Greenpeace inflatable boat on the water.

Romantic nihilism

My search for meaning is rooted in deeply principled idealism that has suffered the thrashing of multiple versions of harsh reality. I’m qualified to work with disenchanted romantics and disoriented cynics because I’ve stood on both sides of the illusion and survived the dissonance. I witnessed the horror of the Rwandan genocide, worked with NGOs, was shot at on Zodiacs with Greenpeace, advised Ashoka, and earned what I call my "dolphin" MBA in Corporate Social Responsibility before ESG was fashionable, deliberately counterweighted with a shark executive MBA to understand how power actually moves. I’ve seen humanity at its worst in Africa and India, and I’ve shared a different, quieter kind of misery among billionaires on Fifth Avenue.

A speaker presents to an audience at a media group event with a close-up eye image on screen.

Rational imperatives

That contrast cured me of naïveté without killing my idealism. Meaning, I learned, doesn’t live only in grand missions or slogans, but in precision, daily discipline, and small, stubborn, effective acts of care that survive contact with reality. My stance is deeply passionate and emotional, but unsentimental: idealism and romanticism are not moral poses, not dogmas, they are rational and aesthetic imperatives. They arise from understanding how the world really works and choosing, consciously, to rebel against it anyway. To assign meaning to things in an existence that lacks it. And that rebellion, if it’s to matter, requires power, tools, leverage, and capital. Pebbles don’t stop torrents. Dams do.

Man in coat sitting on bench with shadow silhouette next to him.

Only results matter

I don’t trade in comfort, insight, or borrowed clarity. I trade in outcomes. Results are the only currency that survives contact with reality, and everything else is theatre. I’m not here to empower you, mirror you, or help you feel better inside a life or organization that no longer works. I’m here to move things. I’ve spent my life where consequences exist: war zones, collapsing companies, hostile boardrooms, activist boats under fire, and markets that don’t care about your intentions. I’ve launched, fixed, scaled, and rescued systems and people when failure was not a learning exercise but an endpoint. That’s why I don’t coach from frameworks. I operate. I apply pressure. I cut through narrative, fear, and self-deception until only what works remains. Meaning follows action, not the other way around. Power precedes impact. Clarity is earned by doing the thing that must be done, not by talking about it. If you want reassurance, there are gentler professionals. If you want results, you’re in the right room.

Progress is not escaping forward

Reframing reality under pressure

I don't offer happiness. I offer truth with consequences.