Strategist and operator. Twenty years reading complexity across cultures, industries, and high-stakes environments — and turning it into delivery. The framework behind the work is +RSE.
It's 04:30 in the morning. I'm 16 years old, walking up Second Avenue in Lotus River, Cape Town. I need to get to my first proper job — shelf packer at Woolworths in the Waterfront, their flagship store. The most premium retail address in South Africa.
Getting there meant three minibus taxis. Lotus River to Wynberg. Wynberg to the CBD. CBD to the Waterfront. Each leg had its own rules, its own power dynamics, its own unspoken codes. And each leg had a gaadjie — the guard who controlled the pace, the stops, and ultimately whether you got where you needed to go.
The gaadjie could read you instantly. How you dressed. How you carried yourself. Whether your coins jangled in your pocket. Whether you hesitated before answering "what's the time?" If you had a watch, and actually answered you'd just signal you had money. If you looked too presentable and too relaxed, you might find yourself waiting longer — or being asked for a tip to buy a coke for the gaadjie
"Code switching wasn't a skill I chose to develop. It was a survival skill I was born into. But survival skills, when refined over twenty years and three continents, become something else entirely."
By the time I walked through the Waterfront doors that first morning, I had already navigated five completely different social contexts. And I hadn't even started my shift yet.
What I didn't know then — and what took twenty years to articulate — is that I was running a framework, before I had a name for it.
That framework is +RSE. It is still the instrument I use — in boardrooms, inside transformation programmes, and in the companies I help build.
Most organisations try to solve complexity at the execution layer — better tools, better process, better content. +RSE says the gap always starts earlier. Before you open your mouth, before you write a single word, there are two decisions that determine whether execution lands.
The foundation layer. A constant, calibrated hyper-vigilance — scanning every environment for its codes before a single word is spoken. Not paranoia. Intelligence. The ability to be so fully present that you catch signals others miss entirely.
In the taxi: assessing the driver, the gaadjie, and the passengers from the pavement — before you even get in.
The first signal. The ability to identify — in real time — a common belief, a shared value, a point of genuine connection. Not reading body language. Reading what's underneath it. Without resonance, everything else is performance.
In the taxi: clocking the gaadjie's mood and energy before exchanging a word.
Once resonance is felt, you choose which part of yourself to lead with. This is not performance — it's selection from a rich internal landscape. Narrow experience gives you narrow options. Deep, cross-context experience gives you range.
In the taxi: deciding whether to show the watch — or answer "don't know, sorry."
The precise delivery. If resonance was accurate and selection was honest, execution becomes almost inevitable. Most people skip to this layer. +RSE says: get the first two right, and the third takes care of itself.
In the taxi: counting the coins correctly in the front seat — every time, under pressure.
"AI can optimise execution. It cannot feel resonance. That gap — between what technology can do and what humans must do — is where this framework lives."
See it in practiceI am a founding partner and CIO in a Nordic data and strategy venture. That is the work that has my week. Alongside it I take a small number of engagements — the kind where the strategy is already agreed and the difficulty is everything between there and delivered.
Board and executive advisory on initiatives that cross functions, cultures or jurisdictions. Reading the situation accurately before anyone commits to a plan — because most execution failures are selection failures in disguise.
Owning a complex initiative end to end — design, plan, run. For organisations moving from idea to impact, built on two decades of knowing what breaks and why.
For founders in the gap between a good idea and a business that runs without them. Drawn from my own ventures — an exit, a wind-down, and the judgement both produced.
Occasionally, for leadership teams and closed rooms rather than conference stages. Working sessions where people leave with something they can use, not something they enjoyed.
Availability is genuinely limited, and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise. If the timing is wrong, I will tell you early.
Co-Founder & COO — Norway · Exit 2020
Norway's first fully automated digital canteen. Grew kitchens from 2 to 25, companies from 10 to 225. Learned that disrupting a market means fighting two wars simultaneously: the technology war, and the culture war. The matpakke doesn't give up without a fight.
Founder — Oslo, Norway
Built a gamified loyalty platform that gave shop owners back control of their customer relationships — at a time when third-party apps were dismantling that bond. Three loyalty timers rewarding return visits, not just transactions. A resonance problem solved through technology.
Founder — Pan-African Platform
Built one of South Africa's lowest-cost insurance products to challenge administration fees approaching 45% of premiums. Learned that sometimes the status quo wins — not because your idea is wrong, but because the system isn't ready to let it be right.
Strategic Project Consultant — Go-live 1 January 2015
Tax reporting at this scale is an ultra high-stakes exercise, with nine- and ten-figure allocations riding on it being right. Collected and collated pricing files across the medical industry, oversaw formatting and processing, then tested and implemented the new prices on the core product engine. R42B of business value on the submission. At this scale there is no margin for misalignment — resonance with every stakeholder in the chain isn't optional, it's the delivery mechanism.
Strategic Project Consultant
Project Managed the design and rolled out a national healthcare product to 43,000 mining sector members in 5 months. Subsequently rolled out to all South Africans, and part of that success can be attributed to building a multilingual call centre. Go-Live tactical plan was designed to be handed over because I was in Norway at go-live and it ran without me.
Nordic Project Lead · Malmö
Delivered a global storytelling movement activating IKEA's 300 million member base. Interface between a US strategy team and Swedish HQ. Swedish consensus culture and Cape Town directness are further apart than geography suggests.
Project Consultant — South Africa 2010
Coordinated logistics and programming for the FanParks at one of the world's most complex live events. An event that changed South Africa forever — and clarified that at this scale, the only thing that matters is absolute ownership clarity.
Strategic Projects Unit · Cape Town
Part of the team that led the migration of a defined contributions pension fund — 19 teams, 100+ resources, R300M budget. Suggested and oversaw the ASI automation tool that pre-formatted legacy data and became the single biggest driver for hitting targets. Founder instinct showing up inside a corporate long before the title existed.
Project Manager · Cape Town
Managed 6 projects including the career-defining CAMRA upgrade — 3 simultaneous work streams, 50 resources, R10M budget. Delivered all 3 objectives on time and within budget. This is where project discipline became muscle memory.
I grew up in Lotus River, Cape Town, in a household where getting anywhere required reading the room before you entered it. That early education in complexity — navigating different social codes across three taxi legs before 09:00am — turned out to be the most useful thing I ever learned.
Twenty years later, I've applied that same intelligence across private banking, healthcare at national scale, the startup ecosystem in Norway, international enterprise projects, and the venture I am building now. The industries changed. The methodology didn't.
I'm based in Oslo, Norway — a choice that still surprises people from Cape Town and baffles people from Oslo. I'm comfortable with that. Operating at the intersection of contexts others find uncomfortable is where I do my best work.
An advisory engagement, a complex initiative you are trying to read accurately, or a conversation about what happens next — start here.