human centered design studio

Our work spans the art-craft-design continuum.

Leading like artists do, we bring transformative perspectives and sustained practices that harness the energy central to growth.

Organizations and leadership find themselves tasked with guiding their teams, organizations and communities through contexts rife with complexity, ambiguity, and unknowns. There is certainty of only one thing - very little can be definitely concluded about the optimal ways of operating, or how we might best relate with one another and with the planet upon which our continued existence depends. However, what is available to us is the inherent capacity that human beings have always had - artistry, craftsmanship and design.

Throughout history artists have navigated unchartered territories and revealed the difficulties as well as the glories lurking within them. The challenges and dilemmas of our times call for answers drawn from sources beyond technological ones - leading like artists do maybe one of the ways forward. That is, leadership as an art, craft and design that is ‘adaptive’ rather than ‘technical’ leadership. Meaning leadership which has the purpose of taking us to places we haven’t been before, places that inductive and deductive thinking based on ‘yesterday’s sense-making’ is ill-equipped to handle.

  • We work with entrepreneurs in the start-up phase of an organization’s life, who are seeking to insure organizational health and vitality from the beginning. They the power and force of first causes in the long- term success of their ventures and are committed to remaining purpose-driven.

  • We serve managerial leaders in the growth phase of an organization’s life, who are seeking to improve the effectiveness and ensure sustainability of your organization. They trust members of their organization and are being called to transition from being a guardian of the answers to being a keeper of the questions and holder of the creative space.

  • Building better boards requires CEOs, lead directors, and board members themselves to do more than just follow all the rules. Attending meetings regularly, having lots of personal money invested in the company, and not being too old, young, or being too many members isn’t enough. Neither having audit committees, compensation committees, and ethics codes will be sufficient. Great boards are robust social systems where members know how to ferret out the truth, challenge one another, and even have a good fight now and then.

  • We partner with organization development and/or human resource practitioners, who wish to develop personally, in their roles and in diagnosing and intervening in their organization. They seek to deepen their use of self as an instrument and become more productive and creative in their professional practice.

  • We assist organization members—with some awareness of their blind sides, coping mechanisms and challenges in their role - who are looking for ways to get better at managing the day-to-day challenges of organizational life and influencing changes. They seek to make your workplace more fulfilling and generative in which to spend time.

we partner with…

Our Services

training

Because learning is more a consequence of thinking and feeling, and less of teaching, it happens best when people reflect on and consciously choose a new behavior. For this reason, we offer custom-designed training solutions, to ensure the solution sticks.

  1. First, that internal systems support the newly desired behaviour.

  2. Second, that your organisation is open to change and is working to create new systems.

  3. Finally, that the training solution directly serves strategic priorities, and has a specific end goal.

coaching

We follow the Coaching Continuum Model which enables us to attend to:

  1. Coaching for skills - for a current project or tasks

  2. Coaching for performance - for increasing effectiveness in a current job/role

  3. Coaching for development - for increasing future job responsibilities and/or career growth

  4. Coaching for an executive agenda - for broader issues related to business or organisation's needs, including better business results, leading change, managing the enterprise, etc.

Consulting

Our consultation services aid in working with the psychological and social dynamics of the whole organisation, groups, and individuals. Our services include:

  1. Solving your problems.

  2. Making a diagnosis and providing recommendations .

  3. Building a consensus and commitment around corrective action.

  4. Facilitating learning so you can resolve similar problems in the future.

  5. Permanently improving organizational effectiveness

Values

  • Increasingly we are experiencing the devouring of the unclean aspects of human behavior, and rewarding of personal integrity and walking through life with impeccability. The same personal integrity that allows for mistakes, embraces forgiveness, and humbly makes self-directed corrections, allowing a rebalanced spirit.

    In our work, we bring these lessons of maintaining dignity, devotion and compassion, and holding onto forthrightness and honesty, irrespective of the consequences. We continue to keep these lessons as reminder to walk the path to prosperity and deeper understanding.

  • They key to our lives is finding a way to rid ourselves of distractions and to replace the mud with clear energy. Our unwillingness to wipe the mire out of our life and letting it turn to quicksand is what works against us. To give supporting energy where it is needed is central to assisting ourselves and others achieve the highest possible for them.

    We have learnt to know when it is time to refresh, purify, and refill the coffers of our soul and cleanse ourselves of any person, place, or thing that does not contribute to our state of serenity and replenishment. 

  • When life’s circumstances attack us, we are called to roll with the punches. Rushing through them and not taking the time to count our victories or to digest key transitions can seem like the right thing to do. However quick-fix solutions do not support long-term goals. To fully appreciate and integrate all that life is offering is a gift we must learn. Thorough digestion of both pleasures and pains of life is extremely valuable.

    We have learnt to appreciate and integrate all facts and all sides of any situation before passing any judgments.

  • As we grow, life becomes more complex and our need to know more expands. As humans we get caught in the web of illusion created through our five senses. Seeing beyond the horizon into other dimensions and working to develop our true, inherent potential requires facilitation of insight and a healing relationship.

    We have learnt that as humans we have the capacity to weave a new pattern when confronted with an impasse.

  • Today’s complexities and speed of change are imposing limits to what rational analysis can achieve. This has led to increased needs for creative problem solving and innovation in today’s organizations, and need for integration of the head, the heart and the spirit through business craft.

    Our struggle with our body, emotions, identity, work and relationships has been central to growth and realizing our potential and fulfilling our purpose. Like a painter who paints self-portraits to engage in a relationship with self, to free oneself from one’s anguish and pain, we work continuously with our and others’ issues of body, identity, work and relationships.

  • As we come to face the result of past habits of acquiring and getting ahead, we hear a call to become virtuous and transcend self. That is to see ourselves act and react on behalf of others, not because of self-righteous moralism, but out of the realization that all life is sacred. We win when everyone wins.

    Leaders who self-sacrifice - cutting one’s own salary or giving up one’s own benefits, cause employees to feel more positively toward their leaders and more committed to their organizations during crises. Such a behavior makes us see them as having higher moral values and as being a better role model — leading to better organizational outcomes.

  • First, we recognize the never-ending cycle of transformation. Simply put, we consider it important to recognize the series of developmental phases as we grow. Each phase begins with a period of evolution, with steady growth and stability, and ends with a revolutionary period of substantial turmoil and change.

    Second, working with unconscious. New practices necessary for growth get stymied because our experience is largely determined by irrational unconscious drives. And bringing the unconscious to conscious is met with resistance and demands skill. This is where both intellect and emotional, rational and intuitive, are central to the work with our clients.

artist & designer

Coach & Consultant

Sorab Gupta has been designing, executing and delivering developmental solutions and growth journeys for individuals, teams and organisations for close to two decades. Sorab’s insight into individual behaviors and system dynamics, and studio-based embodied practices, enable him to bring a unique perspective and co-create ways to execute that is among the best.

Born and raised in an entrepreneurial family, he pursued his passion for science and technology and successfully held product, marketing, and business development roles with key pioneers of the global communications industry in the 1990s. However, his search for system-wide, cross-disciplinary, sustainable solutions led him to a deeper spirituality and living practice that transcended boundaries and included those living on the margins of society. As he continues his journey being human, he is discovering a new meeting ground that brings the arts and humanities, in service of individuals, teams and organisations in discovering and living their essence.

Based in Mumbai, India, Sorab can help develop you, your teams, your stakeholders and your organization, and deliver growth without losing the soul.

Professional Training & Accreditation

  • 1/ Existential Universe Mapper (EUM) for individual and organizations - a composite framework for individual orientations, organisation culture and their inter-relationship, since 2018.

    2/ Multiple Group Relations Conferences organized by Group Relations India since 2015.

    3/ Theory & Practice of Process Work, Bindu Lab and Mahabharata Immersion organized by founding members Sumedhas since 2017.

    4/ Hogan Assessments since 2014.

    5/ The Leadership Circle 360 since 2013.

    6/ Multiple Human Process Labs organized by Indian Society of Applied Behavioural Sciences (ISABS) since 2009.

    7/ Accredited at the highest level (Catalyst) in Organization Development & Change Consulting by ISABS since 2010.

  • 1/ Ontological Coaching with Newfield Network, Singapore since 2010.

    2/Leadership in Action with Strozzi Institute since 2011.

  • 1/ Eros and Psyche with Olivier Mythodrama since 2014.

    2/ Dynamics at the Board Level, with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London, UK since 2020.

  • 1/ MBTI since 2009.

    2/ Leadership Agility 360 with Changewise since 2015.

    3/ Changing Behavior in High Stakes with Dialogix & Kantor Institute since 2019.

    4/ Zenger - Folkman Leadership 360-Degree Assessment since 2019.

Professional Partnerships & Affiliations

  • McKinsey & Co.

    India and other markets in Asia

  • Potentia

    India

  • Executive Core

    Global

  • Accelerance

    UK/Europe and Asia Pacific

  • Ananta Aspen

    India

  • Harvard Business School

    USA

  • Resonate Consulting

    India

  • Initiatives of Change

    India

  • Three Fish Consulting

    India

  • Life Learning Solutions

    India

  • One Design

    India

  • Asian Leadership Institute

    India