Leadership, HR and strategy teams · Singapore
See the decision from every side before you make it.
When sound decisions keep producing surprises, the team is usually looking from one or two positions. We take your people through five, with their values on the table, before anyone commits.
Rooms we have worked in
TemasekIRASNUSRSISSHRIMapletreeMurdoch UniversityTemasek FoundationNCSS
More than 200 sessions delivered across Singapore and ASEAN.
What we believe
Many bad decisions begin as seeing problems.
Perception comes before strategy
Teams stand in one or two positions and miss what the others would show. We fix the seeing before anyone argues about the plan.
Ready for what cannot be forecast
Nobody can forecast a rare, high-impact event. We train teams to be ready when one lands, which is a different skill from predicting it.
Values belong on the table
Every session shapes values, ours included. We say so out loud, and we keep your values in plain view while the team decides.
What we do
Three kinds of work. Each one ends with something written.
We work in boardrooms, polytechnic classrooms and community halls, and the examples we use in the room come from the same places.
Facilitation
Offsites, strategy sessions and the conversation your team keeps postponing. We take one bounded question through each position and name the disagreement before consensus buries it.
You get session design, facilitation and a written synthesis of what was said and decided.
Sensing and research
Market sensing, landscape scans, horizon scanning and scenario work. We build the picture from source, check it against live pages and hand over the method so your team can keep it current.
You get validated datasets, scan reports and scenario sets your team can defend in front of a board.
Capability building
We train your facilitators and programme leads to run these methods themselves. Curriculum, materials and practice runs where they are the ones holding the room.
You get a curriculum, working materials and people who have practised, not only attended.
Who calls us
- HR, learning and development (L&D) and people leadersRetention, capability and workforce decisions that look sound on paper and land badly on the floor.
- Strategy and planning teams in public agencies and statutory boardsPlans that have to hold up against futures nobody can forecast.
- Polytechnics, institutes of higher learning (IHLs) and community organisationsProgrammes and dialogues where many groups need to see the same thing before they act on it.
- Leadership teams facing a decision with no precedentNo playbook to copy, and too much at stake to guess.
How an engagement runs
Scoped in writing before we start. No retainer pitch.
Scoping call
25 minutes. Bring the actual question, not the tidy version you would put on a slide.
Written proposal
Fixed scope, fixed fee and named dates, written to pass procurement the first time.
Delivery
The people you spoke to are the people in the room. There is nobody junior to hand it down to.
Written synthesis
A document your team can circulate and act on, sent within days of the session.
Small by design. We are three practitioners, on purpose. You get senior people in the room and no layer of juniors to pay for. When a job needs more hands we bring in Singapore firms we have worked with, and we tell you before you sign.
People
Who you will be working with
Ibnur usually takes the first call, Saiful designs the work behind it, and Carol leads how people learn inside it.
Ibnur Rashad
Founding partner
Usually the first person you will meet. He co-founded the Sustainable Living Lab in 2011, the workshop behind the iBam, a phone speaker cut from bamboo that runs on no electricity, and runs GUILD Asia across the public, private and people sectors. In a session he asks what it would take to build a rough version this month and put it in front of someone.
Two UNESCO Mondialogo Engineering Awards · TEDx speaker · Engineering Science and University Scholars Programme, NUS
Saiful Anuar
Partner and futures design strategist
Thirteen years as a decorated SCDF paramedic before he ran his first workshop, which is where he learned to hold a room while it is falling apart. Since then he has run sessions for polytechnics, universities, public agencies and corporate teams. He designs the method behind each engagement and writes the synthesis afterwards.
ACLP-certified adult educator · Postgraduate Certificate in Design Strategy and Innovation, SIT · Causal Layered Analysis, Three Horizons, polarity methods
Carol Lim
Principal consultant
Designs how people learn in our programmes, from the first exercise in the room to how a team keeps practising after we leave. She founded the Singapore chapter of #play14, where leaders work on real problems through serious play, and has spent twenty years in senior roles across government, higher education and technology. She also runs The Human Futures Practice.
Foresight, systems thinking and game-informed learning design
Start a conversation
Bring the question you are actually holding.
Write to us in two or three sentences, as messy as it really is. One of us will reply. If it is not work for us, we will say so and point you to someone better.
hi@fivesights.co