Hello friends,

It’s been a while.

Many of you know me from some crossing of orbits between our professional lives, sociopolitical discourse, or creative projects and interests.

Most of you probably know me as a writer. Others know me as an editor, adult education trainer, or comms consultant.

A few of you know about my more eclectic projects like the mrbrownshow (yup, I was that Sam!) and Where’s Najib, the latter of which was my first project as a self-taught software engineer.

So, what have I been up to since this site was last buzzing?

The short answer: I’ve been on a very illuminating quest in the realms of product, content, and management for the past five years.

But that doesn’t really tell the full story of how I got back into consulting, does it?

If you’re curious about exactly how my professional evolution led to my current day job as the Managing Partner of my own management consulting firm, read on.

My Early Forays Into Data Science Dungeons

The signs of my enduring fascination with systems and the natural inclinations of a data scientist were hidden like buried treasure early on in my professional journey. Even seemingly unrelated skills I honed during my decade in comms consulting turned out to be incredibly helpful.

For example, my trained habit of catching what doesn’t fit, at scale and under time pressure, is a skill levelled up via proofreading and editing. This particular cross-domain skill comes in very handy in data analytics, where it directly affects how well I can listen to what the data is (really) saying.

My early usage of Google Analytics first came to mind as I asked myself how data analytics had first flowed through my career journey. Another clue was the instinctive inclination to leash the narrative in my former sociopolitical commentary with data. There was my stint in the travel e-comm space too, where I worked with content metrics to keep content marketing strategy precise, effective, and feasible.

These are just a few examples. As more came to mind, I realised that I had been swimming quite comfortably in the shallows of data analytics for most of my professional career. The magnetic pull I felt towards the BCG RISE Business Data and Analytics course made a lot more sense after this spell of introspection.

Adventurer Gear Needed: A Loadout Upgrade To Fight All The (Business) Monsters!

Why not just weave data analytics and ML into my comms consulting?

One compelling factor led me to a different realm: My core drive to solve complex problems and nose out hidden opportunities. The more complex the problem is, the more determined I am to solve it.  

This core drive is key to my consultant loadout, but it also created inevitable dissatisfaction that spelled the end of my days as a comms consultant. There are few things that make me sadder and more frustrated than a complex problem I’m not able to take on.

You see, not too far into my previous consulting chapter, I began to see and feel a gap that grew with each passing year. Increasingly, with just the limited information available to me in a comms scope, I could see deeper systemic problems that could not be solved with a comms loadout alone. This made me sad.

It wasn’t every client … but it was extra painful when it happened to SMEs. I couldn’t (and still cannot) help having a soft spot for SMEs: after all, I’ve been a small business owner for most of my life, too.

I wanted to help my clients fully, but I couldn’t … yet.

Entering A New Realm, Now With ‘Data Mage’ Gear

When I hung up my comms consulting boots, I had no idea this deep yearning to solve those pesky problems would be answered by … of all things, a Business Data and Analytics course from SkillsFuture.  

At the beginning of the course, I was simply enjoying my adventures in this new(ish) realm of data and machine learning, which felt like an intellectual home I had been seeking for a long time without knowing what I was looking for.

By the fourth week of the course, I was starting to see a new path forward.

What if … we took Colby’s expertise in Lean, ops, manufacturing, and waste reduction and combined that with my existing stacks of domain expertise in narrative, strategy, systems thinking, comms, and now, data science, ML, and genAI?

We realised that this pooled loadout of our domain expertise made a capable consulting duo covering strategy to implementation.

Let’s Dive Into Some Data Dungeons for Buried Treasure

By the time the course ended, I was 100% sure of the path forward. And it is this:

I solve problems and find hidden treasure for businesses now. Think of me like an RPG adventurer for hire: I track down the root cause of the problem, solve the problem, and uncover any hidden treasure I find along the way.

After that, we design improvements that make your business less vulnerable to these ‘business monsters’ (as I term complex business problems, tongue in cheek) with buffs from operational resilience and excellence.

What ‘Business Monsters’ Might We Slay Together?

The rush of being both the hand on the helm and the boat builder of your own vessel, i.e., your business, is a sensation quite unique and yet at the same time, recognisable to a wide swathe of founders, SME owners, sole proprietors, and CEOs.

It is a peculiar and heady feeling to be coming full circle as a consultant again, the same broad role I kicked off my career with over 15 years ago. This time, with some exciting evolution in my domains of expertise, and the type of consulting I do now.

As I type this, the final operational cogs in the steam engine of Lewis & De Silva are in place and beginning to spin, faster each day.

I leave you with an invitation: Whether as a collaborator, ally, client, or curious onlooker, how might you and I work together to solve business problems in your organisation, in your industry, or at scale in Singapore? (Let’s not forget ASEAN!)

Until the next time, thank you for reading, and have a lovely week.

— Sam