Biella Thinking

The creative clarity I find in Italy—and why every leader needs a reset zone.

By Ryan Gartrell

 

There’s a stretch of cobblestone in Biella, tucked behind a stone church that catches the light just right in the late afternoon. It’s not famous. It’s not even particularly scenic by Italian standards. But I go there anyway. I walk it slowly. I breathe differently. And I think better.

Biella doesn’t owe me anything. It’s just a place. But it’s the place that returns me to myself.

I’ve built companies. Fixed broken operations. Navigated family grief. Written novels and songs and scripts under deadline. But clarity rarely arrives when I’m winning. It arrives when I’m still. And no place stills me like Biella.

This isn’t a travel essay. It’s a leadership piece disguised as one. Because over time, I’ve come to believe every leader needs a place like Biella—a place where they remember who they are when no one is asking them to perform.

The Geography of Clarity

I’ve been in boardrooms that felt like war zones. I’ve been behind closed doors with founders so buried in burnout they couldn’t finish a sentence without circling back to the problem they still didn’t understand.

Clarity doesn’t come in the middle of the noise. It comes when you step far enough away from the machine to hear your own thoughts again.

In Biella, I don’t check dashboards. I don’t build Gantt charts. I walk. I sit. I watch older men play cards in the town square, the same game they’ve played since before I was born.

Something about that rhythm—the rootedness, the non-urgency of it—reminds me that urgency is often artificial. It’s something we create to feel important. But clarity only arrives in the absence of performance.

 

Why Leaders Forget to Feel

Leadership is loud now. Social. Branded. Measured in impressions, outreach, and response rates. Everyone is building in public. Everyone is “on.” And eventually, they forget who they were when it was quiet.

Biella returns me to that quiet. It doesn’t ask for content. It doesn’t care about ROI. It asks only for presence.

When I’m there, I write slower but better. I dream wider. I remember why I started building in the first place. And sometimes, I realize what I’ve built needs to be let go—or fixed—because the man running it hasn’t checked in with himself in too long.

That’s the power of a reset zone. Not just for recovery. For recalibration.

 

The Strategic Importance of Stillness

I’ve spent most of my career fixing operational chaos. And I can tell you: most of it isn’t caused by bad systems. It’s caused by leaders who are moving too fast to see that the system has changed while they weren’t looking.

You don’t solve that with another meeting.
You solve it with space.

Your team doesn’t need you to micromanage. They need you to lead with vision. And vision doesn’t happen in a Slack thread. It happens in stillness.

It happens when you put yourself somewhere unfamiliar enough that you’re no longer just reacting. You’re observing. Re-centering. Thinking.

That’s Biella for me. But it could be the woods. Or the ocean. Or a single hotel room without WiFi.

 

What Biella Taught Me About Operating Well

The last time I was in Biella, I sat outside a bakery with a notebook and two small espressos. I sketched out the idea for a Lean AI® audit sequence that became a service we now offer.

I wasn’t planning to work that day. I was just clear. And clarity is the most under-leveraged leadership skill we have.

Biella reminded me that:

• Nothing good is built in burnout.

• Leadership without reflection is often just reaction.

• If your calendar has no room for thinking, your business has no room for scale.

This is where creativity and leadership intersect: not at maximum capacity, but at thoughtful cadence.

Your Version Might Look Different

You don’t need to love Biella. Or Italy. Or Europe.

But you need a place, physical, mental, or spiritual, where your shoulders drop, your mind resets, and your voice returns.

The work will wait. The pressure will still be there. But if you want to lead with clarity instead of noise, you need a place to remember who you are when no one’s watching.

For me, it’s a cobbled alley in a town most people skip on the way to Milan.

For you, it might be closer than you think.

– – –

Ryan Gartrell
Consultant. Operator. Creative.
ryangartrell.com | angryshrimpmedia.com

 

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