Client experiences
What people who have done this work say about it
The most useful account of any consulting arrangement is the one given by the people who have been through it. What follows is a selection of those accounts.
Back to HomeYears of practice in Southeast Asia
Engagements completed across all three types
Average client satisfaction score out of 5
Of Thinking Partner clients continue beyond the initial term
From owners and leaders who have worked with the practice
Wanchai Phiromchai
Founder, manufacturing company — Bangkok
I came into the Succession Thinking engagement with a general sense of discomfort about the future, but without any clear question. The sessions helped me understand what was actually making me uncomfortable — which turned out to be the relational dimension, not the financial one. The written summary has been useful in several conversations since.
March 2025 · Succession Thinking Engagement
Sunita Rajagopal
Managing Director, consulting firm — Bangkok
The Values Articulation engagement took longer to schedule than I had hoped — the interview process across our team required more coordination than anticipated. But the resulting document was exactly what we needed: an honest description of how we actually work, not a polished set of aspirational statements. We have used it in three hiring decisions since.
February 2025 · Values Articulation Work
David Lim
CEO, regional technology business — Bangkok
I have been in the Thinking Partner arrangement for about fourteen months now. It is genuinely difficult to describe what it offers in a sentence or two — the sessions are not advice-giving, and they are not therapy, and they are not supervision. What they are is a consistent space to think out loud with someone who pays close attention and asks the right questions. I find it useful every month.
April 2025 · Thinking Partner Arrangement
Natchaya Pornprapha
Owner, family retail business — Chiang Mai
The succession conversation in our family had been avoided for years — not because no one had thoughts about it, but because there was no safe way to raise them. The Succession Thinking engagement created a structure for those thoughts to surface and be examined. I do not think we could have had those conversations without it.
March 2025 · Succession Thinking Engagement
Michael Herrington
Co-founder, hospitality group — Bangkok
We did the Values Articulation work after a period of fairly rapid growth. The things that had defined how we worked when we were small were getting harder to maintain, and we needed to describe them clearly enough to transmit them to people who had not been there from the beginning. The document we came out with is accurate and usable. That is harder to achieve than it sounds.
January 2025 · Values Articulation Work
Kasem Wongthong
Managing Director, logistics company — Bangkok
I was sceptical about whether monthly conversations would be worth the investment over time. The first few months confirmed the value: having a consistent, external perspective on decisions I was working through in real time turned out to be more useful than any one-off advisory session. The lack of an agenda is the point, not a flaw.
April 2025 · Thinking Partner Arrangement
A closer look at what the work involved
Case Study · Succession Thinking
A founder considering whether to bring in external management
The situation
The founder of a mid-sized trading company had been running the business for eighteen years and was approaching sixty. A private equity firm had made informal overtures. His children were not interested in the business. He had never examined what he actually wanted next, having spent two decades focused on what the business needed.
The engagement
Over six weeks, we worked through the financial, relational, operational, and personal dimensions in sequence. The financial picture was clear; the relational dimension — specifically, the founder's relationship with his senior team and what a transition would mean for them — had not been examined. The engagement surfaced questions that the founder had been avoiding.
What emerged
The written summary described a picture in which the founder had more flexibility than he had assumed, and more relational obligations than he had acknowledged. He used the document in subsequent conversations with his senior team and, separately, with his family. The PE discussions continued on his own terms.
"I had avoided thinking carefully about this for longer than I want to admit. The engagement made that avoidance harder to maintain — which is, I think, the point."
— Founder, trading company, Bangkok · Six weeks · $880
Case Study · Values Articulation
A professional services firm preparing for its second decade
The situation
A Bangkok-based consulting firm had grown from six to twenty-two people over five years. The founding team felt strongly that the culture had changed in ways they had not intended. New staff described the culture in terms that did not match how the founders experienced it. The gap between stated and actual values had become visible.
The engagement
Over four weeks, we interviewed fourteen of the twenty-two staff, observed two internal meetings, and reviewed how the firm described itself to clients. The pattern that emerged was different from both the founding team's self-description and the new staff's perception — it lay somewhere in between, and was more specific than either party had articulated.
What emerged
The values document described five qualities that consistently showed up in the firm's work, with examples drawn from the interviews. It also noted two areas where the stated values and observable practice diverged, and offered thoughts on how to address this. The firm has since used the document in onboarding and in a strategic planning session.
"The document does not flatter us. Some of what it describes is not what we would have chosen to find. But it is accurate, and accuracy is what we needed."
— Managing Director, professional services, Bangkok · Four weeks · $460
Case Study · Thinking Partner
A founder navigating a difficult period with no one to think with
The situation
A founder-CEO of a growing technology company found that as the company grew, her conversations were increasingly functional rather than reflective. Her board focused on results. Her management team needed direction. Her peers were competitors or potential acquirers. She had no consistent space for the kind of thinking that leadership requires.
The arrangement
The Thinking Partner arrangement began with an initial three-month commitment. Sessions covered a mix of operational questions, strategic decisions, and personal dimensions of leadership — whatever she brought. The practitioner's role was to listen carefully, ask questions, and occasionally offer an observation. Not to advise.
After eighteen months
The arrangement continues. The founder describes the monthly sessions as the only consistent space in her work life where she is not performing a role. The value is in that consistency — in having a space that does not change as her circumstances do. Several significant decisions over the period were worked through in the sessions before being made.
"I would not have been able to predict what eighteen months of monthly conversations would produce. The value is cumulative in a way that is hard to point to and easy to feel."
— Founder-CEO, technology company, Bangkok · Ongoing · $280/month
Contact
Telephone
+66 2 531 7648Address
19 Soi Ari 4, Phaya Thai, Bangkok 10400, Thailand
Office Hours
Monday – Friday: 9:00 – 17:30
Professional standing
Postgraduate Qualification in Organisational Behaviour
University of Edinburgh
Narrative Consulting Certification
Applied approaches, completed 2017
SEACEN Consulting Network
Member since 2015
Professional indemnity insured
Annual cover maintained since 2012
A first conversation is always without obligation
If what you have read here suggests the work might be useful, getting in touch to arrange a brief initial conversation is the appropriate next step.