Client Perspectives

What the work looks like from the other side of the table.

These are the observations of clients who engaged with us at a junction in their organisations. Names and identifying details are shared with written permission.

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Engagements completed

4.8

Average client satisfaction (out of 5)

Industries served across Malaysia

68%

Return for a subsequent engagement

Client Testimonials

What clients have said about their experience

Tan Kah Seng

Managing Director · Petaling Jaya

We engaged Kintsugi Forum for the Strategic Direction Workshop when our company was at an inflection point — roughly doubling headcount over eighteen months and not quite sure how that would change what we were. The two days were genuinely uncomfortable in the right way. Questions were asked that we'd been dancing around for two years. The direction memo that came out of it gave us something to refer back to when decisions started pulling in different directions.

Strategic Direction Workshop · April 2025

Nabilah Razak

CEO · Kuala Lumpur

I used the Direction Diagnostic before deciding whether to commission a full workshop. That was the right call — it gave us both enough context to know what would be useful. The written response was direct in a way I wasn't expecting. Some of what it said was uncomfortable, but that was the point of asking. We went on to do the full workshop three months later.

Direction Diagnostic → Workshop · March–June 2025

Wong Chin Hoong

Chairman · Shah Alam

The Annual Plan Review was useful in a specific way — it found the gaps we'd papered over during the planning cycle. We knew something was off in our resource allocation, but we couldn't quite see it from the inside. The written critique identified three specific areas, and the adjustments we made to Q4 and the following year's plan were directly informed by it. Straightforward, no drama.

Annual Plan Review · May 2025

Priya Menon

Founder · Bangsar South

What I valued most was the candour. I've worked with advisors before where the report at the end tells you what you want to hear with enough caveats to avoid accountability. This was different. The diagnostic identified a tension in the leadership team that we hadn't named, and naming it turned out to be most of the work. Worth significantly more than the RM 580 fee.

Direction Diagnostic · April 2025

Ahmad Syazwan

Group GM · Klang Valley

We've used two different engagements — a Plan Review one year and a Direction Workshop the following year, when the review exposed a more fundamental question about direction. The two engagements felt continuous even though they were separate pieces of work. The advisor remembered context from the previous year without me needing to rebuild it. That kind of continuity isn't trivial.

Plan Review + Workshop · 2024–2025

Lee Fung Yi

Executive Director · Subang Jaya

The fixed pricing matters more than it might seem. Knowing the cost upfront — and that there would be no add-ons or extended scope conversations after the work was done — made it easier to present the engagement to the board. The four-week plan review delivered what it said it would, within the time it said it would take. That kind of predictability is underrated in this space.

Annual Plan Review · March 2025

Engagement Summaries

Three engagements in more detail

Industries and identifying details have been altered. Published with client permission in anonymised form.

Case Study — Strategic Direction Workshop

The Situation

A manufacturing company in the Klang Valley with 180 staff. Revenue had grown quickly over three years through one major client relationship that now represented 60% of total revenue. The founding family disagreed about whether to diversify aggressively or continue to deepen the existing relationship. The disagreement had been ongoing for eighteen months without resolution.

The Engagement

Two-day Strategic Direction Workshop with the four-person leadership team. Day one surfaced the assumptions underlying each position. It became clear that the disagreement wasn't about strategy — it was about risk tolerance and time horizon. Day two mapped two plausible directions and the trade-offs each would require, with specific resource implications.

What Followed

The direction memo gave the team a shared document to work from rather than continuing to argue from different internal reference points. A qualified diversification path was agreed within six weeks of the engagement. The follow-up call three weeks after delivery was the first conversation where all four members described the situation the same way.

Case Study — Annual Plan Review

The Situation

A professional services firm approaching Q4, aware that its annual plan had been written during a period of optimism that didn't fully materialise. Revenue was within 8% of target, but two business lines had significantly underperformed while a third had significantly overperformed, and the resource allocation hadn't adjusted accordingly.

The Engagement

Four-week review. The document review identified four assumptions in the original plan that hadn't been tested mid-year. The three working sessions examined resource allocation against actual performance, surfaced two areas that were over-resourced relative to results, and identified one area that had outperformed but hadn't received proportional attention.

What Followed

The written critique identified five specific adjustments. The firm implemented three of them in Q4 and used the critique as the starting framework for the following year's planning cycle — rather than starting from a blank page. The managing partner noted that the exercise took less time and produced more clarity than their usual internal planning retreats.

Case Study — Direction Diagnostic

The Situation

A founder approaching a potential sale of a minority stake to a strategic partner. The founder wasn't sure whether the hesitation they felt about the deal was a reasonable strategic concern or something more personal. They wanted a candid outside read before committing to the next round of due diligence conversations.

The Engagement

One-week Direction Diagnostic. Half-day on-site. Conversations with the CFO and one key senior manager, both conducted in confidence. The written response addressed three questions: whether the strategic rationale for the deal held up, what the founder was actually uncertain about, and what a more cautious alternative path would look like.

What Followed

The founder proceeded with the due diligence but restructured the deal terms based on the written response — specifically around governance rights, which the diagnostic had identified as the genuine source of hesitation. The deal ultimately closed on different terms than originally proposed. The founder later described the RM 580 as a useful hedge on a significantly larger decision.

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Reach us directly

Phone

+60 3-2147 8362

[email protected]

Office

Level 22, Menara Worldwide
198 Jalan Bukit Bintang, 55100 KL

Hours

Mon–Fri: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM (MYT)
By appointment on weekends

How to engage with us

Send a brief note via our contact form or by email describing where your organisation is and what you're thinking about.
We'll respond within one business day to discuss whether and how we might be useful.
If there's a reasonable fit, we'll agree an NDA and set up a thirty-minute call to discuss the specifics before any engagement is agreed.
The engagement scope, deliverables, and fee are documented in writing before any work begins.

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