The journey so far
Rachel Kherzovli
Chief Strategy Officer · India
I grew up in Bhopal and entered design through visual communication.
30 years
Design and service-strategy career
Fictional continuous employment from July 1996
14 colleagues
Strategy function
Three leads within a 169-person practice
₹59 crore
FY2026 revenue
₹42 crore projects and ₹17 crore annual updates
₹3.1 crore
Function expense
FY2026–27; market-experiment provision separate
The compass
I want the growth plan to describe the service people rely on, not only the objects we deliver. A translated label, a new directory entry and a redesigned route can carry very different work. The commercial proposition should preserve those differences so that expansion does not quietly remove the judgement the client expected to buy.
Expeditions
01
In 2018 I supported a multilingual expansion offer priced mainly by the number of words to be translated. It gave sales colleagues a simple unit and made the proposed service appear repeatable across clients. Mariam Qevzomli reviewed twelve proposed briefs and found that five could use the bounded translation scope while seven needed journey-design work. The issue was not that every translation was wrong. An accurately translated label could still leave a visitor unable to recognise a destination, understand a sequence or identify the next decision point. I had allowed the visible words to stand for the wider service. The commercial team wanted to preserve the clarity of the offer. A more differentiated scope would take longer to explain and might make the practice appear less ready to serve a new market. Some clients did want a straightforward translation service, and I did not want the correction to force them into unnecessary design work. Mariam's concern was that the same pricing model was being used for needs that involved different professional effort. We needed to keep the useful bounded offer while refusing to describe it as an answer to every navigation brief. I approved ₹18 lakh to revise the proposition, supporting materials and assessment process. The five translation-scope briefs remained distinct from the seven requiring journey design. Qualified colleagues retained the actual design, access and safety assessments; my team changed the commercial account and the way the offer was presented. The twelve briefs were a selected review, not a representative estimate of all multilingual demand. We did not claim a measured improvement in visitor outcomes or a new universal price for wayfinding work. The revision gave up a single easy sales formula and required me to acknowledge the assumption I had promoted. It also preserved a smaller service that could still be useful when its limits matched the client's need. The bounded outcome was a more explicit offer and funded scope correction. I would now ask what the receiving person must understand before deciding how the enterprise will count and price the work. A strategy can make a service look scalable by removing the judgement it actually needs. That is not a productivity gain if the missing work returns later as an obligation the organisation never planned to support.
02
In 2022 we reviewed twelve selected requests submitted under annual update arrangements. Eight concerned content changes within the agreed navigation layout. Four involved changed spatial routes, requiring the design of the journey itself to be reconsidered. The recurring-service proposition had become attractive partly because it sounded simple: clients could keep their navigation information current through an annual relationship. The question was whether that phrase had acquired an unlimited redesign promise that the practice's staffing and price did not describe. The account team wanted to accommodate the requests within the relationship. Referring a long-standing client to another assessment could look like withdrawing service at the moment it was needed. Mariam explained that treating every change as a content edit would remove professional work from the commercial account without removing it from the actual task. I supported a distinction that the client could understand before approving the next arrangement. The aim was not to charge again for an ordinary agreed edit. It was to identify when the change altered the basis on which the navigation had been designed. We funded ₹32 lakh to redesign the service definition and supporting workflow, with ₹14 lakh annual provision for the additional scoping responsibility. The eight content requests and four spatial changes remained separately described. Actual design, access and safety conclusions stayed with qualified project owners. The revised proposition gave changed-route work an assessed scope and accountable approval rather than silently treating it as unlimited annual capacity. Existing agreements still required their own commercial and legal interpretation; the strategy decision did not rewrite every customer's rights through a new brochure. We gave up some of the simplicity that had made the recurring offer easy to sell. The response also required careful explanations by account colleagues, who could not use the distinction as a reason to avoid ordinary service. No renewal increase, profit improvement or user-navigation result is claimed from the selected review. The outcome was a more explicit continuing responsibility and the resources to support it. I learned to examine the changes a recurring product is expected to absorb before treating annual revenue as inherently easier to deliver. A service remains a commitment after its invoice has become predictable.
03
In 2023 a free diagnostic invitation generated fifty enquiries for a proposed navigation-advisory service. The response looked encouraging in a market-development presentation. A closer review found eight with a funded decision owner, twenty-nine without an identified sponsor and thirteen too early to define the work. Those categories described the position at review, not the organisations' permanent potential. I asked the team to distinguish the attention attracted by the invitation from evidence that the proposed service could progress through an actual buying decision. The growth sponsor wanted to use the response to justify a broader campaign and additional delivery capacity. Her concern was reasonable: demanding a fully formed budget too early could exclude organisations whose needs the diagnostic was intended to clarify. I did not propose abandoning those relationships. I questioned whether fifty responses supported the immediate hiring and expansion account. The team needed another experiment that examined how a real problem moved toward a scoped engagement, while preserving a proportionate route for organisations still exploring their needs. We approved ₹46 lakh for a paid-discovery test with a defined scope and a named client decision process. The test was a next commitment, not a declaration that the eight funded enquiries had signed contracts. The other forty-two remained in appropriate development conversations rather than being reported as lost customers or equivalent near-term revenue. Commercial owners retained the actual terms and sales decisions. The test's future fee and conversion results are not asserted in this case, and its expense was not offset against an invented pipeline value. The decision gave up a faster expansion story based on the headline response count. It also risked reducing participation when the next step required a clearer commitment. That disadvantage belonged in the approval. The useful outcome was a sharper learning question: could the practice and a responsible buyer agree work that justified a paid engagement? I would now define that question before celebrating the reach of an invitation. Interest can be valuable without being the same thing as funded demand. Strategy should allow relationships to develop while keeping the resources committed today proportionate to the evidence actually available.
04
In 2024 we compared a ₹3.6 crore proposal combining design, fabrication and installation with a ₹1.1 crore advisory-only alternative for a fictional programme. The larger proposal included ₹2.7 crore of fabrication and installation pass-through and ₹90 lakh of design scope. The smaller route carried a different advisory responsibility. These were not two prices for identical work, and the headline values could not establish which arrangement better fitted the practice. I wanted the strategic comparison to describe the obligations and resources behind each number. The commercial sponsor favoured the integrated proposal. A single supplier could make the client's procurement simpler and keep more of the delivery relationship with us. The account could also create opportunities for later services. Finance colleagues wanted the working-capital and delivery exposure examined, while Mariam questioned how the practice would support the broader obligation. I did not dismiss fabrication and installation as unimportant activity. They were real work requiring capable owners. The question was whether our growth proposition should carry that work in this arrangement or concentrate on the advisory role. We selected the advisory-only route for further agreement after a ₹27 lakh commercial and delivery review. Finance, legal and qualified project colleagues retained their assessments and the actual agreement process. The case does not compare margins, recognise revenue or claim that the ₹2.5 crore difference between headline values was a saving. It also does not assume that the fabrication pass-through carried no risk or no value. The selected route represented a different service, with its own client responsibilities, rather than a cheaper version of the larger contract. We gave up the prospect of reporting the full integrated headline and some control over the combined delivery relationship. The practice retained a more focused role that matched the capability we wanted to develop. There is no asserted subsequent profit or universal recommendation to avoid integrated work. My lesson is that contract mix can change the business before a growth chart makes the change obvious. A strategist should be able to explain which activity the enterprise intends to become better at, who must deliver the rest and why the chosen arrangement supports that direction. A larger invoice is meaningful only when the service behind it is understood.
05
In 2025 an intermediary proposed a three-year white-label arrangement with an illustrative ₹6 crore aggregate fee opportunity, subject to actual commissioned assignments. The draft operating model would keep all receiving-client conversations with the intermediary. Our team would work from supplied briefs and could not independently discuss the intended journeys with the organisations using the service. The arrangement promised access to more work without building each client relationship ourselves. I asked whether that access also removed a conversation essential to the advice we were being asked to provide. The expansion sponsor argued that the intermediary understood its clients and could coordinate questions efficiently. Direct access by every specialist might confuse responsibilities and slow delivery. I regarded that as a legitimate operating concern. Mariam nevertheless needed a dependable way to clarify the purpose, users and changes behind a brief. A written instruction could be complete in form while leaving an important practical question unresolved. The issue was not a general objection to white-label work. It was whether this proposed model allowed the professional practice to obtain the understanding required by its scope. We spent ₹21 lakh on the commercial and operating review and proposed a bounded joint-briefing process with the relevant client owners. The intermediary did not accept that access arrangement, and we declined the proposal in its offered form. The ₹6 crore remained a conditional opportunity, not contracted revenue that had been earned and then lost. Legal and commercial colleagues retained the actual negotiations. The decision did not establish that the intermediary's model was unsuitable for every service or imply misconduct by a party whose position was explicit. We gave up a possible route to a larger assignment flow and accepted that our preferred responsibility carried a business-development cost. No alternative revenue is invented to make the choice painless. The bounded outcome was a refusal to sell a scope under conditions we believed prevented the necessary understanding. I would now discuss access to the receiving decision owner before using a prospective fee total to describe a partnership's value. Distribution can broaden a practice's reach, but it does not remove the work through which the practice learns what its advice must accomplish. If that work cannot be supported, the service or the arrangement needs to change.
Terrain
Languages
Fellow travellers
In this fictional service review, Rachel kept the professional work beside the recurring-revenue proposition. The distinction made the continuing responsibility assessable instead of assuming that a regular invoice meant every request required the same effort.
This invented account concerns the multilingual offer. Rachel accepted that the pricing unit she had supported did not describe every journey-design need, and retained the cost of correcting the proposition rather than asking the practice to absorb the missing work invisibly.
Dispatches
Word count made a multilingual service look repeatable. The strategic question was whether that unit described the work the receiving client actually needed the practice to perform.
Read the essayAn annual update offer can quietly become a promise to redesign a changing place. Strategy needs to distinguish the continuing responsibilities before treating predictable invoices as predictable work.
Read the essayA white-label arrangement can broaden reach while narrowing access to the receiving client. The strategic comparison needs to retain that working relationship beside the prospective fee.
Read the essayAn invitation
Professional-service strategy discussions and possible first-board exploration where the commercial offer depends on sustained judgement.
office@rachelkherzovli.example