Thorsten Franz
IT project manager and consultant. Technically rooted, at home in responsibility, for over twenty years in projects that were rarely the same twice.
Where I come from
I come from a generation in which apprenticeship years still carried weight. My professional formation began in an industrial environment where you went through department after department and did not just know the processes but understood them in detail. Trained as an industrial electronics technician, graduated with distinction.
Decisive in that was a principle I learned early from my father: observe and analyse attentively rather than looking past things. That foundation is the reason I grasp complex situations quickly and derive workable solutions from them – and why on a building site I can check what an electrician tells me rather than simply minuting it.
In more than two decades of project work I rarely did the same task twice. Every environment examined, analysed, thought through to the end, capabilities sharpened and results delivered – regardless of whether I had had the task before.
What sets me apart: taste
In a world where AI writes code, produces text and delivers analyses, one capability remains un-automatable: knowing what of it counts.
Paul Graham calls it taste. Rick Rubin lives it – without playing an instrument, he has produced more hit albums than almost anyone else, because he always knew what was good and what was not.
I have internalised the same principle in my work. It is not execution that is the differentiator, but judgement. Direction. The ability, in a project with a hundred open items, to recognise immediately what genuinely sits on the critical path – and what is noise.
AI is my tool. The judgement is mine.
What I hold to
Understand first, then act.
I take the time to grasp the situation properly before drawing up a plan. Solutions that come from half an understanding do not hold.
Responsibility for the result, not for the execution.
What I begin, I bring to a workable conclusion. If something lands on my desk, I resolve it.
Clarity, even when it is uncomfortable.
No glossing over problems, no jargon without explanation. A deadline that is already wrong in June does not improve by being left unmentioned until September.
Pragmatism before perfection.
A solution running in production today is worth more than a concept that is never implemented. A good idea only becomes valuable when it works under real conditions.
Service to the entrepreneur.
I see my work as relief – calm, dependable and with genuine interest in the other party's success. Discretion goes without saying.
Mittelstand and corporate
For fifteen years I took on the head of IT role for mid-sized companies externally – companies up to 120 employees, up to five engagements in parallel, some for more than ten years continuously. There is no one there to hand anything to. You are strategy, budget, operations and data protection in one person.
Then the other side: at an international food retail group, infrastructure responsibility for 14 EU distribution centres with three new-build projects in parallel. On the cloud platform of an international retail group, leading interdisciplinary teams and the organisation's first BSI C5 attestation.
Knowing both is the real difference. In the Mittelstand you learn breadth and pragmatism; in the corporate world, structure, governance and dealing with an external auditor. Anyone who has only one of the two notices it at the latest when both are needed.
Why there are two addresses
For twenty years I looked after mid-sized clients in Germany with my own company. When my family moved to Cyprus, that practice did not disappear: my daughter Leonie now runs falocon Ltd as owner and director, the existing clients are looked after there by a team, and I work with them part-time.
That was a deliberate separation. Ongoing support needs cover, structure and continuity – it should not depend on one person. What may certainly depend on one person are fixed-term tasks with clear responsibility: project management through to acceptance, an interim management role, a compliance programme with an auditor at the other end of the table.
falocon is built to work without me. This site exists because some tasks mean precisely me.
Facts
- BORN
- 1976
- BASED
- Prodromi, District Paphos, Cyprus
- EDUCATION
- Industrial electronics technician (graduated with distinction) · Berufskolleg, entrance qualification for universities of applied sciences · Akademie der Arbeit: labour, social and constitutional law, business administration, fiscal policy
- CERTIFICATIONS
- Project Manager (IHK, 2018) · Data Protection Officer (TÜV, 2023 – DSC, 2018) · Data protection expertise TTDSG (BvD, 2022)
- FURTHER TRAINING
- ITIL4 Foundation · Change Management · and many others
- LANGUAGES
- German (native), English (fluent)
Let's talk
If you have a project for which you are looking for someone with this kind of experience – describe it to me. I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person.