Welcome to Off the Slide

Beyond the deck. Beyond the narrative. A candid look at strategy and transformation in the real world.

Every great presentation starts with a simple question: Why?

So, why does Off the Slide exist?

For me, it came down to one observation that kept nagging at me: those of us in corporate strategy and business transformation spend our careers building the perfect narrative for others, yet rarely take a moment to share our own.

The Quirky Reality of Strategy and Transformation

Strategy as a corporate function has been around for decades. Yet ask five different companies what their strategy team actually does and you'll probably get five different answers. Are we long-term visionaries? Internal problem-solvers? Or just highly capable PowerPoint machines? (Yes, we hear that last one a lot. Ouch.)

Then you have transformation teams. A relatively newer breed, usually born when established companies suddenly realize the world is moving faster than they are. New competitors, shifting technologies, changing customer expectations, sometimes entire operating models that need rebuilding from scratch.

The irony is that these teams are usually tiny. A handful of people tasked with rethinking businesses that employ thousands, operating with sky-high expectations, limited authority, and often no direct P&L ownership to show for it.

In a business world defined by disruption, you would think strategy and transformation professionals would feel entirely secure. Instead, we often sit in a strange paradox – highly important, yet occasionally questioned. Influential, yet peripheral. Critical, yet rarely fully understood.

I felt that this corner of the business world deserved a bit more daylight and transparency.

The Knowledge That Stays in the Room

A lot of people in this space cut their teeth in consulting. And consulting gives you something genuinely valuable: you see a lot, very quickly. Different industries, contrasting leadership styles, the messy ways companies actually make decisions (or spend months avoiding them). You sit in closed-door rooms where things get debated with real honesty, then watch the polished version emerge from the other side.

The problem is that most of that hard-earned experience stays private.

Business media naturally gravitates toward the most senior voices: the C-suite, the senior partners. Yes, this makes sense. But there's a whole layer of practitioners underneath, mid-level, hands-on, doing the actual heavy lifting, who carry a surprising amount of practical insight but they don't have a dedicated place to share it.

So, What Is This Platform Exactly?

It’s not a breaking news site. It’s not a personal diary. It sits somewhere in between.

It's a place to unpack what really happens after the slides are approved: how strategy and transformation are shaped, challenged, and executed in practice, and what it takes to build a career in the space between ambition and results, where influence often matters more than authority.

For now, our lens will lean toward Asia, as that’s where we are based and where our deepest experience lies. But the core themes of navigating corporate complexity are universal, stretching far beyond any single geography.

If you work in this field, I hope you find things here that resonate, ideas that feel familiar or perspectives that shift how you approach your own work. And if you're coming from outside it, I hope it gives you a better sense of what actually goes on behind the slides.

One Last Thing

This is just Day One. Our focus will shift, and our topics will evolve as we figure out what resonates. But we're genuinely curious to see where this goes.

Thanks for being here – let’s see what happens when we look off the slide.