A company's competitiveness begins with the strategic clarity of its leader. We often look for the levers of performance in technology, capital or the economic climate. They matter. But upstream of all of them sits a less visible and more decisive variable: a leader's capacity to see clearly, to make the tough calls and to hold a course. On the scale of a continent, the sum of these individual decisions shapes Europe's place in the world economy.
This article examines why strategic vision, the ability to make trade-offs and clear-sightedness have become competitiveness factors in their own right — and how rigorous executive coaching turns these qualities into a lasting advantage.
The diagnosis is now public and well documented. Delivered to the European Commission on 9 September 2024, Mario Draghi's report on The future of European competitiveness sets out a clear finding: the GDP gap between the European Union and the United States, measured in 2015 prices, widened from a little over 15% in 2002 to 30% in 2023. The report identifies one principal cause for this divergence: productivity.
The lag is also one of innovation. Since 2017, 70% of foundational artificial-intelligence models have been developed in the United States, while European investment has concentrated on already-mature technologies. The report also points to a structural problem: the fragmentation of the single market produces companies that are too small, within which innovations spread too slowly.
This macroeconomic diagnosis translates, at the level of each company, into a series of concrete choices. Should you invest in a breakthrough technology or consolidate what already exists? Expand internationally or strengthen your domestic market? The Draghi report also notes that Europe has the foundations to be a highly competitive economy: 17% of global GDP, 440 million consumers, one third of adults holding a higher-education qualification. The potential exists. What makes the difference is the quality of the decisions taken to unlock it. And those decisions have an author: the leader.
Competitiveness cannot be decreed; it has to be thought through. Before it is a matter of execution, it is a matter of clarity: knowing precisely which problem the company solves, for whom, and what makes it hard to imitate. A leader who has not answered these questions will not be able to have their teams resolve them.
This clarity directly conditions the capacity to innovate. You do not innovate in a fog: you invest where you have identified a defensible position. The European innovation deficit highlighted by the Draghi report is not only a question of resources; it is also a question of strategic reading — of leaders able to anticipate a market shift rather than endure it.
The story of Ogury, told by its co-founder Thomas Pasquet on the VISCONTI Talks podcast, illustrates this link between vision and competitiveness. From the company's creation — it specialises in user-respectful mobile advertising — the founders made a positioning bet: to open simultaneously in three countries, France, Italy and England, then in the United States two years later. Going international was not a consequence of growth; it was the starting point. Today the company operates in seventeen countries. This early reading of where the real competition lay was a strategic decision before it was a commercial achievement.
A clear vision is only worth as much as its survival in the real world. And the real world forces you to choose — often between two defensible options, often without complete information. To make trade-offs — to give up one possibility in order to serve another — is the most demanding act asked of a leader, and the least shareable.
Again on the VISCONTI Talks podcast, Thomas Pasquet describes a rare trade-off: the one that led him to step back from operations to become chairman of the board in January 2023, hiring a chief executive to run the company day to day. Making the call on your own role — accepting that you will no longer intervene in operations "for good" — is perhaps the most delicate trade-off a founder can make. Yet it determines the maturity of the organisation. Another choice, an earlier one, stems from the same clear-sightedness: the shift to a "cookieless" model in early 2020, a few months before Apple announced the deprecation of its advertising identifier and Google the end of cookies on Chrome. Anticipating a market movement rather than enduring it: that is where competitive advantage is found.
These trade-offs carry a psychological cost that the research documents. According to Bpifrance Le Lab, a leader's sense of isolation peaks precisely in the strategic decisions that commit the company's future. In 2026, close to one business leader in two (49%) reports feeling isolated, against 45% ten years earlier — and that feeling reaches 58% in difficult periods. The quality of a trade-off rarely depends on courage alone: it depends on the chance to test one's reasoning against a trusted third party before deciding.
The third strategic quality of a leader is the most uncomfortable: clear-sightedness. It requires looking without complacency at the real state of one's company, the soundness of its model and the pace of the changes surrounding it. The Draghi report is a reminder of this on a continental scale: decline often arises from an attachment to mature technologies and a reading of disruptions that comes too late.
This clear-sightedness can be cultivated. It comes in particular through continuing education, which leaders nonetheless remain reluctant to pursue. As Hubert Reynier, founder of VISCONTI Partners, notes in his article Why is training for company leaders essential?, stagnation in working methods "can, in the long run, harm the company's competitiveness and innovation". Training, unlearning, relearning: this is the upkeep of strategic clear-sightedness in an environment where technology, regulation and business models change quickly.
A clear-sighted leader is not one who has an answer for everything. It is one who identifies early what they do not yet know, and organises themselves to learn it before their competitors do.
If isolation weakens decision-making, then structuring it becomes a competitiveness issue. Bpifrance Le Lab is explicit on this point: governance is a genuine "weapon against isolation", alongside the formalisation of a strategic vision and training. Putting in place the right corporate governance bodies — an executive committee, a board of directors, an advisory board — is not an administrative formality. It is a way to inform decisions and to lift the leader out of the isolation of the role. The study notes, moreover, that 62% of leaders without a close-knit team felt alone in the face of crisis, against 23% of those with an executive committee.
Alongside internal governance, executive coaching by an external third party plays a complementary role. An experienced sparring partner does not provide a ready-made solution: they challenge the reasoning, test the soundness of the trade-offs and help the leader think more broadly. This is precisely the stance VISCONTI Partners takes, with a model built on coaches who have themselves been leaders — because to challenge a leader, you have to have been one.
This support has measurable value. The Global Coaching Client Study conducted by the ICF and PwC in 2009 indicates that 86% of companies that used coaching at least recouped their investment, with a median return of seven times the initial outlay. The market confirms this maturity: according to the ICF's Global Coaching Study 2025, professional coaching now represents $5.34 billion worldwide, up 17% since 2023, with leaders and managers making up more than half of coaches' clientele.
Executive coaching also acts on an often underestimated lever of competitiveness: communication. A vision, however sound, only mobilises people if it is conveyed with clarity. Communication coaching helps the leader align their message, bring their teams on board and carry their strategy to stakeholders — clients, investors, employees. The leader's inner clarity then becomes collective clarity.
Vision, trade-offs, clear-sightedness: these three qualities are not developed in isolation. They are honed in contact with precise expertise and a demanding outside perspective. This is the logic behind VISCONTI's six centres of expertise, which cover the areas where a company's competitiveness is decided today: artificial intelligence, international development, financing and capital, leadership and management, ESG and cybersecurity.
Each centre brings together partners recognised in their field and dedicated market intelligence, so that executive coaching is aligned with the company's real strategic objectives — not with generic recipes. The aim is not to add more consulting, but to strengthen the leader's capacity to decide alone, better and faster.
Investing in your own support is not an admission of weakness. It is the clear-sighted recognition that, in an economy where the competitiveness gap widens with the pace of decisions, the quality of thinking at the top is the primary factor of performance.
European competitiveness will not be restored by investment plans alone. It will be built company by company, trade-off by trade-off. The leader is its starting point: their strategic clarity flows through the whole organisation, or their vagueness paralyses it. Structuring governance, sustaining clear-sightedness and surrounding oneself with executive coaching equal to one's responsibilities are not options. They are the conditions for a competitiveness that begins, always, with the clarity of the person who decides.
Why is the leader a competitiveness factor? Because competitiveness results from a chain of decisions — on positioning, investment and innovation — of which the leader is the author. The Draghi report (European Commission, 2024) shows that Europe's lag stems first from productivity and innovation, two areas directly driven by leadership choices. A leader's strategic clarity therefore conditions the company's ability to create and defend an advantage.
What does executive coaching actually provide? Executive coaching offers a confidential space in which to test trade-offs before making them. It helps break the isolation of decision-making — which Bpifrance Le Lab estimates to be rising (49% of leaders isolated in 2026) — and strengthens strategic clear-sightedness. ICF/PwC studies place the median return of this kind of engagement at seven times the investment.
What is the link between corporate governance and performance? Structured corporate governance (an executive committee, a board of directors, an advisory board) informs decisions and reduces the leader's isolation. Bpifrance Le Lab calls it a "weapon against isolation": 23% of leaders with an executive committee felt alone in the face of crisis, against 62% of those without one. Better governance means a better-informed decision.
Does coaching really help you communicate better? Yes. Communication coaching allows a leader to align their message with their vision and to bring their teams and stakeholders on board. A strategy only takes effect if it is understood and shared: clarity of communication extends clarity of strategic thinking.
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