The system behind the system has always been the work.
Sanjiv Agarwal is an enterprise leader, executive coach, and writer working at the intersection of operating performance, people, culture, and the inner life of leadership. His work asks a practical question: what is shaping a decision before the decision becomes visible?
Performance matters. So does the person who has to carry it.
Sanjiv works with the tension that appears when the outer demands of leadership, such as delivery, pace, accountability, and change, start to pull away from the inner capacities that make good judgment possible. That tension is rarely solved by a better slogan. It needs attention, language, and a serious conversation.
The engine room
Before people and culture, there were balance sheets, process maps, and P&L statements.
In the first half of his career, Sanjiv worked in the operational engine room of global financial services. At HSBC, he led a 400-person banking operations team spread across continents and built a greenfield site in Colombo. The work was risk, governance, financial control, and the daily discipline of making a complex machine run. It gave him a lasting respect for the difference between a process that looks sound and a system that actually works.
The human code
Then came the realisation that an organisation's operating system is not its technology.
It is the invisible code that shapes how people think, decide, and behave. That insight moved Sanjiv from operations into people leadership: leading HR for 20,000 people across six countries, guiding transformation, and shaping people and culture strategy for Swiss Re in South East Asia and India. The work made one thing plain: culture is not what an organisation says. It is what people learn to do when the pressure is real.
The deeper question
The visible craft of leadership is real. The question of who is driving it is deeper.
Alongside a senior operating career, Sanjiv has trained and worked as an executive coach. He is an ICF PCC credentialed coach, holds a master's degree from Cornell University, and completed an Organisation Development Certificate Program with ISABS. His writing brings this professional life into conversation with modern psychology and the contemplative traditions of India, without turning either into a shortcut or a slogan.
Words are a way to return to the decision before it hardens into a story.
Through his writing, especially the RajTalks series, Sanjiv uses small, recognisable moments to explore large professional questions: the habit behind the judgement, the fear beneath the avoidance, and the identity that makes it hard to let go.
The forthcoming book, Who's Driving?, carries that inquiry further through the chariot image of the Kathopanishad and the everyday reality of leaders under pressure.
Explore the book
Close to three decades in global financial services, across Asia and through growth, integration, and reorganisation.
Executive coaching, organisation development, modern psychology, and the contemplative traditions of India.
Work that respects complexity, confidentiality, and the difference between a framework and a lived decision.
Credentials are a record of practice, not a substitute for it.
Sanjiv's work is informed by enterprise operating experience, executive-coach training, organisation development, and continuing study. The credentials below are the public records currently confirmed from his professional profile and verified badge sources.
View the complete public archiveProfessional Certified Coach (PCC)
ICF Credentials and Standards · issued August 2022
02Hogan Assessments Certification
Hogan Assessments · issued April 2023
Organisation Development Certificate Program
Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Science (ISABS), 2024 to 2025
Master's degree
Cornell University ILR School
Ideas that have travelled beyond the room.
Selected articles, media conversations, and professional publications, each linked to its original public destination.
“I do not see people strategy as a support function. I see it as the ultimate form of business strategy.”
Sanjiv AgarwalExplore the work