I spent 20 years leading high-stakes delivery in banking, healthcare and global enterprise. I've done this from Cape Town all the way through to the Nordic ecosystem, where I've founded a number of startups.
Projects fall into two broad categories. Business as usual, like migrations and year-ends, and then blue-sky, never-been-done-before initiatives. I thrive when tasked to lead a team with confidence into the unknown.
Fixed term agreements with set outcomes.
Sometimes it's just a vision or crazy idea.
Fractional. For scale-ups and founders too.
I also run closed-room advisory working sessions for leadership teams.
Strategic Projects Unit · Cape Town
Strategic Project Consultant · Go-live 1 January 2015
Strategic Project Consultant · Administered by Medscheme · South Africa
Nordic Project Lead · Malmö
Project Consultant · South Africa
Project Manager · Cape Town
There's management, and then there's leadership. Call me when you know what you want, but don't know how to get there.
The PMs that live and die by frameworks and methodologies never shoot the lights out.
IKEA: US strategy team and Swedish HQ. Bonitas: a South African go-live run while I was in Norway. Old Mutual: 19 teams aligned.
Business changes, technology changes, but it's funny how people are all the same. Leading projects is as much about business and technology as it is about people.
Yes, co-founder and COO of Food.Farm: 2 to 25 kitchens, 10 to 225 companies. A pivot to real estate SaaS and exit in 2020.
This is what happens when you leave your home country, find a cool coworking space and bring corporate project management discipline to the startup world.
Watching other PMs plan from today and create a plan for the future tells me all I need to know. Fixed deadlines force you to plan and work backwards.
You focus on doing the right things, and not necessarily things right. That's why I can create a plan that runs by itself while I'm away for go-live.
After you pass the HR interview, you meet your business sponsor or key stakeholder. That's where you separate people and their experience.
The beauty of project management is that scope, size and the budget tell everyone what sort of pressure you have delivered under. There are no shortcuts in this game.
A R42B regulatory tax submission needs to get done, or there are fines. A new insurance product nets a rand per member per month to the administrator.
I've always, only ever worked on projects with a business case that I can understand. Anything else goes to another department or a different PM. Not interested in anything else.
There are no shortcuts. The only thing you can do is outwork everyone else, and that's exactly what I did bra.
There's a different kind of intelligence you build as a youngster needing to go to the shop alone. Reading people and rooms is second nature.
I wrote about the triangle of people, business and technology when I was interviewed for Metropolitan Health Risk Solutions. You can talk about scope, time and cost, and this holds the project together. But what keeps it moving is the three sides staying aligned until the thing is live.
I know myself, and so I come to know others. At the end of the day, it's about being able to walk the floor and connect with people at all levels. The boardroom is nice, but so is the canteen.
If you can't explain the business case to me, either you don't have a business or you don't understand it well enough. Because my business for being hired depends on yours.
I started with Assembly, then Cobol, then C++, then SQL and and and. Technology keeps changing, and you either understand that and harness it or you don't. Same thing with AI.
+RSE is my own framework that gives me a set of tools and a language to use to describe how I go about doing my thing. It's built on my own experience over 20+ years and has never failed me. Most organisations try to solve complexity at the execution layer with better tools, better process and working faster. I think the gap starts earlier.
Something I learnt as a kid growing up on the flats. By default, you're scanning every environment for its codes.
Can you connect with someone and find the shared value or belief in real time? Without resonance, everything else is performance.
This is where you choose which part of yourself to lead with. A narrow set of experiences gives you limited options, but cross-context experience gives you range.
You have to know your terrain or environment, then connect, then choose from a bank of experiences. If you get the first three right then execution becomes almost inevitable.
"AI can optimise execution. It cannot feel resonance. This framework sits in the gap… between what technology can do, and what humans must do."
Co-Founder & COO · Oslo, Norway
I co-founded Norway's first fully automated digital canteen. I onboarded and grew kitchens from 2 to 25 and companies from 10 to 225, and exited in 2020. The platform went on to become a real estate SaaS platform deployed to clients including Selvaag, Norwegian Property and Mustad Eiendom.
Once you start a tech company, grow it, survive the "valley of death", run out of cash, fight with your co-founders, win big clients, lose big clients and run it all the way through to an exit — you learn how lucky you are.
Founder · Oslo, Norway
This was 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. The state's decision to close down the F&B sector due to Covid resulted in me deciding to fold the company. The IP was acquired by a software vendor. I learnt that you can have the perfect business model, gain some traction and feel like this is the one, and then factors outside of your control wreck all of your plans.
Founder · South African product, pan-African ambition
I wanted to challenge administration fees approaching 45% of premiums in South Africa after seeing how the going rate is 3–7% in Europe. Backed by Innovation Norway and probably the clearest business case, you sometimes learn that the status quo wins. And this has nothing to do with yourself or the idea, it's just that the companies won't reduce the premiums, they will just make more money — sadly.
Kykie bra… I grew up in Lotus River on the Cape Flats of South Africa. Plainly put, this means that getting anywhere required you to read the room before you entered it. Having to understand at a young age how to change and manage social codes across three different taxi trips to get to the city centre was easily the most important business skill I learnt.
Since then I've delivered across film production, private banking, healthcare at national scale, insurance, international enterprise projects and the Norwegian startup ecosystem. 2026 marks 10 years under the belt building companies here. It's operating at the intersection of contexts others find challenging where I do my best work.
I also run closed-room working sessions for leadership teams.
Read the origin story"A never-ending string of references who were unable to recall any weaknesses in this IT Project Manager, who's equally comfortable running strategic and technical projects."
"Tauriq comes highly recommended for his calmness under pressure and his high level of energy — both great influences over any project team."
Tell me about it. Book a 30-minute call to test the fit, or send a brief and I will come back to you.
I take on a small number of engagements at a time. If the timing isn't right, I'll tell you within 24 hours and suggest an alternative.