👋🏻 Hi, I’m Sumeet
I serve as the global head of culture and organisational design at Thoughtworks.
I’m a product builder at heart, and when consulting with clients. You’ll also see me as a moonlighting author, a wannabe photographer, but most importantly, a husband and a dad.
I love creating stuff, period. Over my career of twenty-odd years, I’ve built many products, from collaboration platforms and data visualisation tools to modernising decades-old legacy systems and building tiny, low-code apps.
You may also know me as the author of The Async-First Playbook. I’ve always been passionate about learning how different groups of people collaborate, and the book distils my ideas and techniques to run inclusive, high-performing, distributed teams.
I live in Pune with my wife, Gayathri, and our two kids, Avni and Vihaan. Like most Indians, I’m multilingual. I speak English, Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi, and I’ve been learning Swahili nonstop for the last ≅1400-odd days. My guilty pleasure is coffee; you could argue I drink too much of it. And while some people think of me as an Energiser Bunny on steroids, my batteries drain out by 9 p.m., and I’m ready to hit the bed soon after!
The following sections in this document will tell you a few things about me that you may not know already. You don’t have to read it all. Skip to a section that interests you.
💎 My values
Someone once told me that your values can’t change. Well, my values have changed over the years, and I reckon they’ll change in the future too. But at this stage in my life, these are the things I value and treasure.
😇 Peace of mind
Maintaining a sense of calm is important to me.
🎓 Learning
I enjoy the challenge of learning new skills.
💪🏾 Autonomy
I value being able to execute tasks on my own terms.
⏳ Time
The biggest dividend any success can give me is more control over my time.
💙 Relationships
I have a few deep relationships and friendships, which I cannot and will not ignore.
5️⃣ My big five personality traits
If you don’t care about personality tests, this part will be boring as. I’ve probably taken every personality test there is, but I understand that the “Big Five” is the most widely used framework for measuring personality. Here’s how I came out on that test. The scores range from 0 to 100.
Openness to experience
consistent/cautious
vs.
inventive/curious
75
Agreeableness
critical/judgmental
vs.
friendly/ compassionate
88
Conscientiousness
extravagant/ careless
vs.
efficient/ organised
67
Negative emotionality
resilient/ confident
vs.
sensitive/ nervous
25
Extraversion
solitary/ reserved
vs.
outgoing/ energetic
54
If you’d like to know about my Enneagram (I’m a type 6 - i.e “loyalist”), MBTI (I’m an IFSJ), top strengths, or HEXACO-personality inventory, ask me and I’ll tell you. 😀
🦹🏽♂️ My superpowers
As a long-time consultant, my job is to solve problems. And to do that, I employ a few skills more often than others. If you need help in either of the top five skills I’ve listed here, consider me your colleague to reach out to.
✍🏽 Writing
I enjoy writing as a way to communicate ideas and to develop my thinking.
🔬 Research
I have tons of experience in qualitative and quantitative research techniques.
📐 Prototyping
Working products beat arguments. I enjoy building scrappy prototypes to validate hypotheses.
👨🏽🏫 Facilitation
Over the years, I’ve built a tried-and-true method for aligning groups of people through both asynchronous and synchronous facilitation.
🌄 Storytelling
Stories are all around us. They come in many media. If you need help building a coherent narrative for an audience, talk to me.
🧑🏾💼 Roles I play
While I’ve played many roles in my career, here are the kinds of jobs I’m most suitable for.
💻 Product management
As I’ve said earlier, I enjoy building things. Building the right thing and building it right is a process I enjoy.
👔 Advisory
Tech is all about problem-solving, and I’ve learned to match problems to solutions. This positions me as a trustworthy advisor to clients.
📚 Knowledge management
I’ve implemented modern and sometimes cutting-edge knowledge management solutions for my employers and clients. It’s an area I’m passionate about.
👨🏽🏫 Learning & development
It fascinates me to study and influence how people learn and how to create learning organisations. Hot tip - it’s not only about training!
🌄 Change management
Change is the only constant in business. Over the years, I’ve led many programs of change, and my successes and failures have taught me heaps about how to facilitate change in companies.
✅ Program management
This is a role I can play, but I don’t enjoy it. Program management is all about making others’ lives easier, but it leaves you with little time to create. And that’s why it isn’t my first preference. If needed, I can support this role.
🌈 Work environments that make me tick
No workplace is perfect, but having thought about the kind of work environment I thrive in, I believe it should tick many of the following boxes.
🧠 Deep work
I enjoy spending long, uninterrupted hours finding creative solutions to complex problems. Getting into a rabbit hole is a feature for me, not a bug.
⚖️ Work-life balance
Most of us have lives outside work, and I wouldn’t want to neglect mine. So I like to maintain clear boundaries between work and personal time.
🤝 Empathy
While I don’t have to be BFF with my colleagues, I’d like to understand them as human beings, and I’ll feel valued if they do the same.
👓 Efficiency
It’s no fun solving the same problem over and over. I’d rather solve a problem once and make the solution repeatable so others don’t have to experience the pains I went through.
🎈 Fun
Work needn’t always be fun, but our work relationships can be! I prefer work environments that make room for enjoyment, alongside the rigour of daily work.
🙌🏽 Great colleagues
I’ve learned a lot from working with awesome people. If I can learn from someone else, it’s an #epicwin for me, as a lifelong learner.
🕰️ My working hours
“8 hours for work, 8 hours for life, 8 hours of sleep. That’s a fair formula.” - 37signals
I prefer to work 40 hours a week, between 9 am and 6 pm IST each day. That said, I’ve always worked in distributed teams, collaborating with colleagues or clients in other parts of the world. I’m flexible with occasional early starts or late ends, as long as I can maintain a sustainable pace. Remember, my chronotype is a bear 🐻.
🗣️ Communicating with me
These are my communication preferences. Mind you, I’m not dogmatic, but I am opinionated! So, if you dislike my way of communicating, please talk to me and we’ll figure something out.
☑️ Task board
Jira/ Monday.com/ Asana. If it’s related to a piece of work we’re doing, I prefer the communication to be in the context of the task on the task board. That way, our interactions are transparent, but not noisy for everyone else.
📄Shared documents
is my preferred way to handle complex collaboration. We can build out our thoughts together and give each other inline feedback if we must.
BTW, I hate writing in slides!
💬 Chat
Please ping me for anything that needs a single message response. I don’t monitor chat during focus time, but I will respond during the day.
That said, I find chat unproductive for debates and complex discussions.
🤙🏽 Phone
If it’s urgent, this is the best way to get my attention, especially after hours. Don’t ask. Call. I don’t mind.
Best for initiating a larger topic, in private. I check my email thrice a day.
Oh, and maybe I should clarify that I prefer an async-first (though not async-only) way of working. I wrote the book, after all.
💡 One-on-one meetings and collaboration
These meetings are the ones I find most productive. I get to pair with others, in deep work mode, on shared pieces of work. Through regular one-on-one conversations, we also get to know each other well. They’re my surest way to build trust, understanding, camaraderie and a sense of interdependence with colleagues. If you’re up for it, we should do these interactions regularly.
🫱🏼 🫲🏼 Exchanging feedback with me
“Early and often” - that’s my motto with feedback. I find feedback most useful when I receive it in the context of any work I’ve done. If you wait too long, you’ll likely forget the details of the incident, and I won't have any way to act on your suggestions. It may help you to know that I don’t see feedback as positive or negative. Through your feedback, you’ll either strengthen my confidence or improve my effectiveness. Both of those are positive outcomes!
If you’re looking to learn how to share effective feedback, I recommend reading Kim Scott's book Radical Candour. I’m certain that if we can practise “radical candor” between ourselves, we’ll be great colleagues to each other.
The radical candor approach by Kim Scott
🧰 My favourite tools
Long-time colleagues know me as a tool junkie. Here are some tools I love to use.
Glean
The. Number. One. WorkAI. Platform. I could drop my mic here.
Search for knowledge, use it as your personal assistant, have it automate your busywork. Glean does it all. Think of yourself as Gru and Glean as Dr Nefario orchestrating your minions!
Google Drive
Enough said. My favourite content type is Google Docs, but I use pretty much everything else as well - Sites, Diagrams, and MyMaps are some unsung heroes of the suite.
Jira
To collaborate with colleagues or to maintain transparency with stakeholders about the progress of work.
Mural
For visual collaboration and to create online whiteboards.
Nirvana
For personal task management and getting things done.
Keynote
The transitions on Keynote are far more polished than Google Slides (the one Google tool that I dislike). I use it to build the kind of presentations you’ll see on my YouTube channel.
Notion
It’s my personal knowledge management (PKM) platform. All of my notes go here. Think of it as my second brain.
Canva
Anyone can feel like a graphic designer with Canva. The speed and usability are epic.
Screenflow
Best screencasting tool for the Mac. I use it to create tutorials and walkthroughs, such as those for the async-first starter kit.
Photoshop
Composites, posters, artwork, photo editing - I love Photoshop for its timeless versatility.
Lightroom
I’m a photographer, and I have to edit photos. Lightroom is the best tool to deal with RAW files straight out of the camera.
Illustrator
I often make custom vector illustrations using Illustrator.
Firefly
Adobe’s Firefly engine is probably the most reliable way to use GenAI inside its Creative Suite of products.
Midjourney
Midjourney latest versions take AI image generation to the next level, especially with its style reference and style transfer features.
Sketch
I use it a lot to work with artboards and to create mockups of user interfaces.
Perplexity
Best. Research. Tool. Ever. Add to that the ability to choose different models to do your work and the ability to curate pages from AI output - that spells “happy days” in my book.
Gemini
Gemini has recently stolen a march over its competitors. I also find some of the Workspace integrations useful, though, after a point, they’re quite gimmicky.
Figma
Figma > Sketch if you want to elevate your mockups to clickable prototypes and if you’d like to help your developers translate your design into pixel-perfect interfaces.
ChatGPT
One would have to be living under a rock to not use this, eh? I used to be an avid user, but I use it less often these days.
I also dabble with other tools like Zoom Clips, Claude, Descript, Replit, Bolt, UXPilot and whatnot because at the end of the day (and the beginning) I’m a tool nerd.
💭 What else should you know about me?
I’ve already told you about my family. Here they are, in the photos below – Vihaan, Avni and Gayathri.
👨👧 My parenting situation
Our family situation is atypical. I’m a single parent to my daughter for a few days of the week, and my wife and I parent our son all week. They’re both young and need support. That’s why I’m particular about ending my workdays on time, whenever possible.
I’m also a wildlife and outdoor photographer. Truth be told, being in the wilderness, particularly in Africa, is my one true passion. I don’t get time to publish my work regularly, but if you’re curious, check out www.sumeetmoghe.com.
You’ll find me blogging every week about the present and future of work, high-performing teams, psychological safety, and other such topics, on www.asyncagile.org.
My colleagues and friends know me as an avid reader. In most months, I read five books, alternating between nonfiction and fiction titles. Ask me what my top 10 from last year were!
I am an absolute cricket buff. If there’s a test series on, I’m invariably on an edge. I can talk about the sport till the cows come home 😃.
Oh, and I’m rather health conscious. I’m a minimalist when it comes to my work-out regimen. All my gear fits into a shelf in my cupboard. That way I have no excuses not to work out. I also watch what I eat - I haven’t eaten a grain of sugar in the last nine years!
One of the reasons I’m so particular about my health is that I used to be a chubby fella. So in my head, I’m always running away from that old version of me. Much like how Mathew Inman runs from the blerch.