So what do you actually do?

I work with founders and leaders at the structural layer of their organisations — the decision-making, the operating model, the culture as architecture, the governance. The layer beneath the visible surface. Most people come when something isn't working and they've run out of surface fixes. Some come right at the beginning, which is actually my favourite kind of work.

Who do you work best with?

People who are building something that genuinely matters to them — not just commercially, but actually. Who understand that the organisation they are building reflects how they think and what they value. And who are willing to go slowly enough at the beginning to do it right. I'm not a great fit for people who want a framework delivered and rolled out. I'm a much better fit for people who want to build something from the inside out.

Where did you come from?

Twenty years across delivery, operations, and consulting — in financial services, insurance, and HR, working with some of the world's largest organisations. The distinction I'd make is that I wasn't just advising: I ran global teams, owned P&L, and was responsible for things actually working. What I was really doing underneath all of it was trying to understand why some organisations function and others don't — why the same strategy lands differently in different places, why some structures enable people and others quietly exhaust them. That's the pattern recognition the shikumi work draws on. I also did get to complete MDP at IIM Ahmedabad and got selected to complete the well known Stanford Ignite Program— and I make things: I paint, write poetry, host philosophy salons, and once edited a book. I used to think of these as separate. I don't anymore.

Why the Japanese word?

Shikumi (仕組み) means the underlying structure — the mechanism that makes a thing work. It's the right word because what I care about is invisible. You can't see a good shikumi. You feel it in how decisions get made, how people move through their work, whether the vision that started everything is still alive in the day-to-day. When I came across the word, it named something I'd been trying to describe for years.

What's the painting and poetry about?

They're not a break from the work, or a hobby, or a brand differentiator. They're the other half of the same practice. The kind of attention required to make something — sitting with what isn't yet formed, noticing what's actually there — is the same attention the strategy work requires. I've always moved between the two. I edited Nir Eyal's Indistractable as part of a crowd-sourced editorial project. I've had writing published in Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul. I have hosted philosophy and poetry salons. I've never been able to separate the making from the thinking, and I've stopped trying.

How long does working together take?

Longer than most things take. The arc — sensemaking first, then building the structures, then tending them as they grow — takes as long as it takes. I don't do quick audits or ninety-day sprints. I take a small number of clients at a time, which means each engagement gets the full weight of my attention.

How do I know if this is right for me?

If reading the Philosophy page felt like reading something you already knew but hadn't quite been able to say — you're probably the right fit. Reach out. We can talk.

Knowledge is everywhere now. Are you worried about AI making what you do less relevant?

Honestly? No. And I've thought about it carefully.

AI is extraordinary at retrieving, synthesising, and generating. It can produce a strategy deck, a process map, an org chart in minutes. That's genuinely useful — and I use it.

But the work I do isn't really about knowledge. It's about attention. About sitting with an organisation long enough to feel where the energy is stuck, where the language people use is hiding what they actually mean, where the structure on paper and the structure in practice have quietly diverged. That's not a retrieval problem. It's a presence problem.

Knowledge was always abundant. Even before AI, most organisations weren't failing because they lacked information — they were failing because they couldn't make sense of what they already knew. That gap between knowing and understanding, between information and coherence, is exactly where I work.

If anything, AI makes the human capacity for sensemaking more valuable — not less. When everyone has access to the same tools and the same outputs, what differentiates a business is the quality of thinking that shapes how those tools are used. That's still a deeply human thing.

I'm not competing with AI. I'm working with people who need help seeing clearly — and that's a need that doesn't go away just because the library got bigger.