With 40 technology patents and a career spanning nearly four decades at the highest echelons of global IT—including senior executive roles at IBM and Wipro—Shaji Farooq is an architect of organizational transformation. Now at the helm of Chazey Partners, he leads a firm of "practitioners": former CFOs and operators who view consulting through the lens of lived accountability rather than theoretical checklists.

As the industry moves beyond the initial hype of generative AI, Farooq is championing the rise of agentic AI—autonomous systems designed to act and execute within complex back-office ecosystems. In this conversation with The Consulting Report, Farooq discusses the "glue" between business and technology, the strategic case for repatriating service centers, and the leadership principles he draws from the wisdom of Warren Buffett and the design-led ambition of Steve Jobs. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

“‘AI’ as a generic label has become almost meaningless.”

The Consulting Report: Can you provide an overview of your firm's areas of specialization?

Shaji Farooq: Chazey Partners specializes in operations transformation, specifically back-office operations across finance, HR, and shared services. What we are focused on now, very deliberately, is becoming the go-to firm for organizations that want to transform their operations leveraging agentic AI. 

I want to be precise about that term, because "AI" as a generic label has become almost meaningless. What we are talking about is agentic AI: systems that don't just assist, they act. They execute tasks, make decisions within those tasks, and communicate outcomes. That is a fundamentally different capability, and it requires a fundamentally different approach to transformation. We help our clients assess the AI-readiness of their operating model, select AI opportunities, and navigate the quickly expanding landscape of AI partners.

“Our consultants are not career consultants who have only ever seen operations from the outside.”

The Consulting Report: How does your firm differentiate itself from competitors?

Shaji Farooq: The first thing I would say is that Chazey is a practitioner-led firm. Our consultants are not career consultants who have only ever seen operations from the outside. They have been CFOs, CHROs, and senior operators. They have sat on the other side of the table. They know what it feels like to be accountable for a transformation that has to actually deliver, not just look good in a presentation. And critically, they work on the projects themselves. When a client engages us, they get the experience, not a team of junior analysts supervised from a distance.

That practitioner foundation is what makes everything else possible. We think of ourselves as the glue between business and technology, and that is not a small thing. Technology vendors approach the technology team. We always start with the business. We go in, we understand their pain points in their language, we show them what is realistically possible, and we bring them along as believers before a single line of code is written. That changes everything. Once business users are on your side, the technology teams get the mandate they need to move boldly. Without that alignment, even the best technology will disappoint.

The other thing that differentiates us is our discipline around implementation. We develop detailed roadmaps and financial business cases that both provide the information needed by leadership for decision-making and serve as an accountability framework for the whole transformation. As assumptions change, we update the business case, providing the information needed to understand the impact of decisions. This approach allows the team and leadership to move forward with confidence, rather than being ruled by change orders. 

The Consulting Report: Are there one or two client projects you are particularly proud of? 

Shaji Farooq: All of our projects are memorable, but there are a few that standout where our experience and approach made a real difference.

We just finished a project with Google for a risk assessment of their outsourced HR services. In the past, Google had used one of the Big 4 consulting firms, but the outputs were generic and it was a “check-the-box exercise”. They wanted the risk assessment to be completed by senior staff with industry knowledge, not juniors wielding checklists. Google was referred to Chazey Partners and we won the subsequent RFP process. We received great feedback on the project, but I was especially pleased that they confirmed that the assessment brought added value to Google and we are looking forward to extending our relationship with them.

On the other side of the spectrum, we recently completed a project for an organization spun off of a much larger parent high tech manufacturing company. There were several issues that we were able to resolve for them with a new operating model and technology streamlining, but one stood out. They had outsourced their help desk in a joint initiative with IT and finance to a U.S.-based provider. 

The service wasn’t good and IT and finance planned to go to market to find a new provider in India. They would have saved money, but with no real pathway to improving the underlying service issues. As a relatively smaller player in the arrangement, HR's concerns were not being heard. As part of the assessment and roadmap we prepared for HR, we recommended that HR repatriate the contract and create a captive help desk in their existing Mexico-based service center. The roadmap gave HR the credibility needed to break from IT and finance, and we set up the new captive help desk, saving money and greatly improving the service.

The Consulting Report: How would you describe your firm's culture?

Shaji Farooq: The most honest answer I can give is this: people stay. Chazey is a 20+ year-old firm, and we have colleagues who have been here from the very beginning. That single fact tells you more about our internal culture than anything I could describe. People do not stay for two decades unless they feel genuinely valued, unless the work is meaningful, and unless they are surrounded by people who hold themselves to a high standard.

We are a practitioner-led firm, which means there is a deep mutual respect among the team. Everyone here has held real roles, carried real accountability, and understands what it takes to deliver. That shared experience creates a culture of honesty. We have direct conversations with each other. We challenge each other. And we trust each other, because we know everyone in the room has been in the trenches before.

There is also a real sense of belonging here. A shared identity that has been built over two decades. That is something you cannot manufacture. It grows when people feel that what they do matters, that their experience is respected, and that they are part of something worth staying for. That is what Chazey feels like from the inside.

“Agentic AI has not changed what transformation is, it has dramatically expanded what is possible.”

The Consulting Report: Has AI dramatically changed the types of client mandates you are hired for?

Shaji Farooq: It is changing the conversation, absolutely. But I would push back on the framing slightly. Agentic AI has not changed what transformation is, it has dramatically expanded what is possible. The goal has always been the same: eliminate the routine, elevate your people, [and] improve speed and quality of service. What is different today is the power of the tools available to achieve that, and I think we are at a genuine inflection point. The organizations that approach this with discipline now will look back in a few years at a fundamentally different operation. The ones that treat it as another hype cycle to observe from the sidelines will find themselves in a very uncomfortable position when the gap becomes impossible to close.

The Consulting Report: Is there a book, mentor, or mantra that has influenced how you lead your organization?

Shaji Farooq: Two figures come to mind immediately: Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs. I think together they capture something important about how I try to lead.

Warren Buffett embodies a kind of practical wisdom that I find deeply compelling. There is nothing complicated or abstract about how he thinks. He focuses on what is real, what is knowable, and what actually creates lasting value. He cuts through noise. In a world that is constantly chasing the next new thing, that groundedness is rare and powerful. It is a reminder that sound judgment, patience, and clarity of thinking will outlast almost any trend.

Steve Jobs represents something different but equally important: the relentless belief that design and customer experience are not afterthoughts, they are everything. He did not ask customers what they wanted and then build it. He imagined what they needed before they could articulate it themselves. That approach to customer focus and design thinking, the idea that how something works and how it feels are inseparable from what it does, has influenced how I think about the work we do at Chazey. When we design a process or build a solution, the experience of the people using it matters just as much as the outcome it delivers.

Between the two, I think you get a complete picture: Buffett keeps you grounded in reality and long-term value; Jobs keeps you ambitious about what is possible and obsessed with the people you serve.