What clients say
about the work
The perspectives here come from founders and leaders who have worked with Orin Strand in different capacities. They are shared with permission and reflect the range of what the practice does.
15+
Years of experience
60+
Leaders worked with
4.9
Average client rating
88%
Engage for 6+ months
Client Perspectives
In their own words
"The Founder Conversation sessions have been useful in a way that I find difficult to describe precisely. The questions asked are simple, but they surface things I haven't articulated to myself. It has changed how I chair our management meetings."
Razif Hamid
Founder · Technology, KL · April 2025
"We commissioned a Capability Map for our operations function. The written output was clear and honest — it named some things we had been reluctant to name ourselves. The interview process was thorough without being intrusive. Worth the cost."
Serena Chan
COO · Consumer goods, Petaling Jaya · March 2025
"I subscribe to the Reading List and have done for eight months. The curation is genuinely specific to what I'm working through — it is not a generic digest. The annotations are the most useful part; they save considerable time deciding what to actually read."
Ahmad Yusof
MD · Professional services, KL · April 2025
"What I appreciate most is that the sessions do not come with an agenda from the consultant's side. Some engagements I've had with advisors feel like they are steering you toward a conclusion. This one doesn't. The conversation follows wherever I take it."
Lim Teck Wei
Founder · E-commerce, Shah Alam · February 2025
"The Capability Map we had done on our product function helped us understand why we kept shipping late. The analysis was grounded in actual evidence from interviews and work samples — not a generic assessment. It took about a month to act on the findings."
Nadia Bakri
VP Product · SaaS, KL · March 2025
"I was sceptical about whether an annotated reading list was worth a monthly subscription. It is. The context notes change how you read something. Knowing what to skip is as valuable as knowing what to read — particularly when time is short."
Zulaikha Rashid
Director · Healthcare admin, Subang · April 2025
Case Studies
How the work played out
Case Study · Capability Map · Operations Function
The challenge
A 45-person logistics business in KL had grown its operations team from 4 to 11 people over two years but was not achieving proportional output gains. Leadership could not identify why. Headcount had scaled; capacity had not.
What was done
A Capability Map engagement covering the operations function — six interviews, a review of process documentation and recent outputs, and a written map identifying where the function's design had not kept pace with its size. Delivered in four weeks.
What followed
The map identified two structural gaps: unclear decision rights at team-lead level, and a routing process that created bottlenecks. Six months after changes were made, throughput per person had improved measurably and two supervisory roles were clarified.
"The map gave us a vocabulary for what we'd been sensing for months. It was honest, not flattering, and that's what made it useful."
Case Study · Founder Conversations · Technology Business
The challenge
A founder preparing to transition from an operational to a more strategic role found the transition slower than expected. Day-to-day decisions continued to surface at her level; she was unsure whether this reflected a structural issue or a leadership one.
What was done
Founder Conversation sessions fortnightly over five months. Each session began with whatever was most present for the founder that week. Over time, a clearer picture emerged of which decisions were genuinely escalating and which she was pulling back from other leaders unnecessarily.
What followed
By month four, the founder described a noticeable change in the quality of her management team meetings — less escalation, more direct ownership among senior staff. The sessions continued on a monthly cadence after the initial period.
"I came in thinking I needed operational advice. What I actually needed was to hear myself think out loud with someone who wouldn't just agree with me."
Case Study · Reading List · Senior Leader, Professional Services
The situation
A managing director wanted to stay current on organisational design and management practice but found the volume of business reading overwhelming. She had stopped reading much at all, which bothered her.
The service
Reading List Curation monthly for six months, beginning with a conversation about the questions she was currently carrying. The list that month included three articles and one book excerpt, each with a short annotation on what was and was not worth engaging with.
After six months
She described reading more consistently than she had in the previous two years, and credited the annotations as the key factor — they allowed her to read with direction rather than obligation. She continued the service beyond the initial period.
"It sounds like a small thing until you realise that 'knowing what to skip' is actually most of the problem with keeping up with professional reading."
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