Deciding what to automate is now a leadership question, not a technical one.
Mohd Atasha helps chief executives decide where human judgement belongs as more decisions become automated by AI, across business, technology and policy. He has made those calls from inside a government, inside a regulator’s remit and inside a company that had to reach profitability.
The first two figures were won over two years negotiating on Malaysia’s behalf with chief executives at Fortune 500 and Forbes 2000 companies. The third is entailed by a career that opens in 2001. The career arc sets out both the period and the work.
When leaders call him
- A decision is large enough to change the company
- Something is being bought, built, automated or restructured, and the case for it is sound on paper. The question is no longer what to decide but who should be making the call, and on what evidence.
- Something has stalled and the reason is not obvious
- The plan was agreed and the money was approved, and it is still not moving. The useful question is which of strategy, delivery, regulation or adoption it has actually caught on, because the answer changes who has to act.
- A regulator or an approval has set a timetable nobody planned for
- The commercial plan was written before the requirement arrived. He has negotiated under that pressure on a government’s behalf, and afterwards moved to designing the policy rather than negotiating under it.
- Automation is moving faster than the judgement behind it
- More decisions are being handed to systems, and it is no longer clear which ones still need a person. That boundary is the subject of the practice, and there is a published framework for setting it.
Why him
- National AI standards
- Holds a seat on the national artificial intelligence technical standards task force, whose output is voluntary industry guidance rather than law.
- International institutions
- Has served as a consultant to the International Trade Centre in Geneva, advised a UNCTAD and Alibaba fellowship, and spoken at the United Nations.
- Operating record
- Part of the management team that took a venture-backed company from loss-making to profitable, now growing about fifty per cent a year.
- Across the table
- Two years negotiating on Malaysia’s behalf with chief executives at Fortune 500 and Forbes 2000 companies considering investment in the country.
What people who have worked with him say
I had the chance to work closely with Atasha, and he was an absolute standout. What really impressed me was how well he listened to the needs of foreign direct investors coming into the country. He has a natural ability to engage, understand their challenges, and translate those insights into meaningful action. That combination of empathy and execution is rare, and incredibly valuable.
Atasha is very focused and a go getter when it comes to making things possible for his stakeholders. His ability to see the business perspective enables him to engineer solutions with the least friction.
Read all fourteen assessments, with the roles held at the time.
Starting a conversation
One conversation before any scope is written, to establish what has already moved, what decision is waiting on it, and whether this is the right practice for the question at all. Where the honest answer is that someone else is better placed, that is said rather than worked around.
Talk through the decision you are facing
Everything on this page is published in full elsewhere on this site and can be checked. The colophon records how the figures are sourced.