Strategic counsel.
No bloat.

Senior counsel for moments of limbo, recalibration, and pressure.

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The problems worth solving right now are moving faster than most advisory models were built for. Leaders are making consequential decisions in real time, often without a precedent to reach for. What they need in those moments isn't a framework. It's someone who can actually keep up.

I named this practice Namaa because the word holds three things I believe in.

نماء
Growth
Arabic
The organisations I work with aren't optimising. They're building something of genuine consequence that didn't exist before.
नम
Creative power
Sanskrit
The hardest problems don't have a playbook. They need original thinking, applied in real time.
今
Now
Okinawan
The moment matters. Not a deck delivered six months later. Thinking when it's needed, at the pace the problem demands.
Where I work
01
The ambition is real. The organisation isn't built for it yet.
The strategy is ahead of the capability and the gap is widening. I help organisations build the capacity to deliver what they've committed to, before that gap becomes the story.
Giga-projects · New institutions · High-growth
02
The real decision is hiding behind the stated one.
Everyone is debating A vs B. But A vs B is the wrong question. Nobody has named what's actually at stake. I find the real decision and make it visible before the wrong one gets made.
Boards · Leadership teams · Founders
03
You built this for a reason. Staying commercially viable is starting to feel like a compromise.
Purpose and profit pull in opposite directions more often than anyone admits. I work in that tension rather than pretending it doesn't exist, helping organisations hold both without losing either.
Impact ventures · Purpose-led businesses · Social enterprise
04
You're sending people to Harvard. Nothing is changing.
The training happens. The frameworks land. Then everyone goes back to the same environment that produced the problem. Capability doesn't stick when the organisation isn't designed to hold it.
Capability building · Talent development · Institutional design
05
You're spending a lot on consultants. You're not sure you're getting the most out of them.
Knowing how to scope an engagement, brief a team, push back on the right things, and then actually use what gets produced is a skill most organisations don't have. I do, from both sides of the table.
Consultancy management · Strategy activation · Senior client capability
06
Something isn't working. You're not sure what.
Sometimes the most valuable thing is figuring out the right question before trying to answer it. I help organisations diagnose what's actually going on before committing time and resource to solving the wrong thing.
Diagnosis · Problem definition · Strategic clarity

How it works

01
Single session
One pressing decision, 90 minutes. You leave with a Decision Memo you can act on or share the same day.
02
Focused engagement
A specific challenge over two to four weeks. Three or four sessions with support in between.
03
Ongoing access
Senior thinking on call through a period of pressure or significant change.

About

Namaa is Alisha Mody.

Twenty years working with leaders on the things that are hardest to think clearly about: new institutions being built from scratch, organisations trying to move faster than their own structure allows, decisions with consequences nobody wants to name out loud.

Strategy, transformation and venture design across global banks, giga-projects and early-stage ventures. Monitor Deloitte, Wolff Olins, Xynteo, and a decade as senior adviser to Bethnal Green Ventures. The common thread has always been getting ambitious ideas to actually work.

Educated at Princeton and Juilliard, child of immigrants, lived and worked in America, Europe, Asia, Middle East.

Clients include: American Express, Bethnal Green Ventures, Deloitte, EDF, GSK, HSBC, Lloyds, Microsoft, NEOM, Publicis Sapient, Santander, Skype, Wolff Olins, Xynteo.

What people say

"Wildly intelligent, incessantly curious, charming and unafraid. Alisha really gets it: how business can shape the world for the better, and is extraordinarily rare in being able to translate the big purpose into real, tangible, radical, doable actions."
"One of the most thought-provoking illustrations of what our business could be. A strategic provocation that challenged entrenched thinking and re-imagined the experience we could provide."
"Rare for someone of this level of academic quality to also be warm, open-minded and practical. She understands the dynamics of the most complex organisations and acts accordingly."

If something here resonates,
let's talk.

A short conversation to see if I can help. No pitch.

Get in touch
Clarity

Tools for clearer thinking.

There is a lot of talk about AI driving efficiency. But there is another use case that gets less attention: using AI to support clearer thinking. Not to replace the human brain, but to help us use it more effectively.

The more stretched a leader is, the more they prevaricate. Not because they are indecisive. Because the conditions for clear thinking have collapsed. Overloaded working memory. Elevated anxiety. No uninterrupted time. The way senior roles are designed actively destroys all three simultaneously.

Two tools. A simple crutch for when the conditions are against you. Each one runs as a real conversation in Claude, one question at a time, and ends with something concrete you can act on or share.

Paste the prompt into a new Claude chat. It will ask you questions one at a time. Answer honestly. Let it push back.
01

The Decision Memo

Use this when you need to make a significant call.

Most leaders make high-stakes decisions in the gaps: between calls, under time pressure, without writing anything down. Six months later the consequences arrive and nobody can remember what was decided or why. The Decision Memo slows the thinking just enough. It makes the real decision visible before you commit.

The prompt 
You are going to help me work through a decision and produce a clean Decision Memo I can share. This is a real conversation, not a questionnaire. One question or prompt at a time. Wait for my full answer before moving on. If I am vague, push back. If I am avoiding something, name it directly. Do not be polite at the expense of being useful. The entire conversation should take no more than 20 minutes. You have a maximum of 8 exchanges to get to the memo. If after 6 exchanges we are still circling, tell me directly that we need to move toward a conclusion, summarise what you have heard, ask me to confirm or correct it, then write the memo.

Step 0 - Establish context
Ask me the following three questions one at a time. Wait for my full answer to each before asking the next.
First: who are you and what do you do?
Second: what is personally at stake for you in this decision - not professionally, personally?
Third: how much time do you have right now?
Then proceed.

Step 1 - Describe the decision
Ask me to describe the decision I am facing. Just that. Nothing else yet.

Step 2 - Find the real decision
Do not ask an open question. Based on what I have just told you, offer me three possible framings of what the real decision underneath might be. Make them specific to what I have said. Ask which framing feels closest to the truth, or whether none are right. Do not move on until the real decision is named precisely. If still vague, offer three more framings.

Step 3 - Surface the options
Ask me what my options are. Tell me you need at least three genuinely different options - not variations of the same choice. If the options feel like the same thing dressed differently, name that and push me to find a genuinely different path. If I am stuck, offer a wild card option and ask whether it changes my thinking.

Step 4 - Name the trade-offs
For each option, ask me what I would be giving up if I chose it. Do not accept the first answer - ask whether that is the real cost or just the obvious one. Push me to name what I am most reluctant to give up. Do not move to the next option until I have answered honestly about the current one.

Step 5 - Test the instinct
Ask me what my instinct is and what I am leaning toward. Then ask: does my reasoning actually support that instinct, or am I rationalising something I have already decided? If my instinct and reasoning point in different directions, name that tension explicitly.

Step 6 - Test the non-negotiable
Ask me what my non-negotiable is. Then test it: if the pressure became extreme, would I actually hold that line? What would have to be true for me to abandon it?

Step 7 - Surface the unsaid
Ask me: what have I not said in this conversation that is relevant? Do not accept nothing. If I say nothing, offer three possible things I might be avoiding - based on what I have told you - and ask whether any are true.

Step 8 - Write the memo
Only once we have been through all of the above, write the Decision Memo. One page. No preamble. Structure: the real decision / options considered / trade-offs / recommended stance / non-negotiables / risks to monitor. Close with one sentence I could say out loud to my board.

Output: A one-page Decision Memo, ready to share.

02

The Pre-Mortem

Use this before you commit to something significant.

Most teams run post-mortems. They are useful. But by then the damage is done. The Pre-Mortem flips the sequence: you imagine failure before you commit, while you can still change course. It uses prospective hindsight to surface the risks, blind spots and wrong assumptions that conventional analysis misses. Not pessimism. Intellectual honesty, applied at the right moment.

The prompt 
You are going to help me stress-test a decision I am about to make and produce a Pre-Mortem summary I can act on. This is a real conversation, not a questionnaire. One question at a time. Wait for my full answer before moving on. If I am vague, push back. If I am avoiding something, name it directly. The entire conversation should take no more than 20 minutes.

Step 0 - Establish context
Ask me the following three questions one at a time. Wait for my full answer to each before asking the next.
First: who are you and what do you do?
Second: what is personally at stake for you in this decision - not professionally, personally?
Third: how much time do you have right now?
Then proceed.

Step 1 - Describe the decision
Ask me to describe the decision or commitment I am about to make. Just that. Nothing else yet.

Step 2 - The failure
Ask me to imagine it is 12 months from now and this went seriously wrong. Ask: what happened? Wait for my answer, then ask why. Keep asking why until we reach root causes, not surface ones. Do not accept the first answer.

Step 3 - The silence
Ask me: who saw this coming and said nothing? Why did they stay silent?

Step 4 - The assumptions
Ask me: what did we assume that turned out to be wrong?

Step 5 - The inconvenient
Ask me: what did we ignore because it was inconvenient?

Step 6 - The unsaid
Ask me: what have I not said in this conversation that is relevant? Do not accept nothing. If I say nothing, offer three possible things I might be avoiding and ask whether any are true.

Step 7 - Write the summary
Only once we have been through all of the above, write the Pre-Mortem summary. Clean. Structure: the decision stress-tested / failure causes identified / which are preventable / guardrails to add before committing. Close with one sentence I could say out loud to my board.

Output: A Pre-Mortem summary with failure causes and guardrails.