Meet Michelle
Hello
I'm Michelle de Villiers, and if you're here, welcome to my corner of the web. Let me share a little story. Back in 2018, after spending years consulting on culture, behavioural analytics, and optimising recruitment, I founded GapCognition. Why? Because I realised that at the heart of every thriving organisation is a behavioural culture that truly allows people to flourish.
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Now, I’ve always believed that nobody wakes up wanting to fail. We all want to be our best selves, and we want to succeed. But the secret ingredient is having the right environment that supports that success. And that’s what I do: I help organisations understand their own behavioural landscape, identify what makes top performers shine, and then coach and support everyone else to navigate that environment effectively.
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So, when you read about GapCognition, you’re really reading about a mission: to match people to environments where they can thrive, to empower leaders to understand the human side of their strategy, and ultimately to create a culture where success is just the natural outcome.
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Let’s shape success together.
Coaching & Executive Advisory
Now, let’s talk about coaching. Think of it like having a personal trainer, but for your professional life. Just as a good coach helps a swimmer or a runner refine their technique and improve their performance, my role is to help individuals and leaders develop the tools and processes they need to drive progress.
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Coaching with me isn’t about dwelling on the past or unpacking emotions in a therapeutic sense. It’s about saying, “Here’s where we are, here’s where we want to be, and here’s the structured path to get there.” It’s a very forward-looking, outcome-driven process. And the beauty of coaching is that it helps you get to your goals more effectively and often faster than you would on your own.
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As for executive advisory, it’s about helping leaders understand that the “people element” is just as strategic as the bottom line. When leaders can empower their teams and put the right people in the right roles, the entire organisation can execute strategy more smoothly. So that’s the heart of what I do: coaching and advising so that success isn’t just a goal, it’s the journey we’re on together.
Strategy & Performance Management
Now, when it comes to strategy, you can think of it as our big-picture blueprint—the wide, blue sky that answers why we’re doing what we’re doing and what makes us unique. This is where we lay out our competitive advantage and our long-term goals. But a strategy on its own is just the starting point.
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Once we have that strategy defined, the real magic happens when we roll it down into the day-to-day life of the business. This is where we turn that big vision into a concrete plan. We integrate it into our key performance indicators (KPIs) and key performance areas (KPAs), so that every department and every team member knows exactly how their role contributes to the overall strategy.
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That’s where performance management comes in. On my website, you’ll find that this is one of the core services I offer. Performance management is all about setting up those KPIs and KPAs for each department head, team leader, and team member, all in alignment with the strategy. It becomes our measurable tool to see what we’re doing well and where we might have gaps. And when we can measure it, we can manage it. We can quickly identify where someone might need more support, more coaching, or more development to bridge those gaps and keep us on track.
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In short, we start with a strategy, we roll it down into a plan, and we use performance management to make sure every individual is aligned and empowered to drive that strategy forward. It’s all about creating transparency and giving us a responsive tool to keep everything running smoothly.
I’d really enjoy connecting with you.
Our offices are based in Pretoria, but we cover the whole of Gauteng. Most of our consultations are virtual, and we proudly work with clients across South Africa — and even internationally.
+27 72 241 4188
