Intentional Friction
The modern business culture exercises the elimination of friction. It worships speed and lionizes scale, measures value in the velocity of growth and the efficiency of execution. The prevailing doctrine demands that any obstacle to the bottom line must be optimized or removed, regardless of whether it’s a process, a person, or a difficult question. A leader’s worth is often judged by their ability to make fast things move faster.
Shailja Sachan’s professional philosophy questions this mandate. She built an operational model that does not seek to eliminate friction but to engineer it. Her work is a conscious act of deceleration, deliberately introducing checks and questions into a system designed for unchecked momentum. She describes herself as a "chronic over-thinker when it comes to design and development". This declaration is not a confession of inefficiency but a deliberate strategy. She reframes overthinking as "really deep thinking," a necessary process for asking uncomfortable questions about "who's left out" and "what's the hidden cost".
Sachan challenges the systems "built for speed and scale" by proposing a radical alternative. In the human-centric ecosystems where she operates, sustainable value is not cheated. It is cultivated. Her work attempts to design "tools and systems and narratives that translate slowness into value". This positions her methodology as a counter-narrative to conventional venture-backed growth. It is a model built on the conviction that the most resilient outcomes emerge not from speed, but from depth.
"I'm a chronic over-thinker when it comes to design and development, and I see that, when you're overthinking design and development, it's not overthinking, it's just really deep thinking."
Design Feature
"And, you know, the systems… are not broken,
they are designed that way."
Sachan’s doctrine of intentional friction was not developed in the ivory tower of an academic landscape. It was forged in the operational reality of the global luxury fashion industry, an environment that promised the "epitome of craftsmanship" but delivered a harsher reality. Her connection to the work was personal. Her mother was an embroidery artist, and her grandmother a weaver, a history that gave her a familial respect for the makers. This perspective shaped her entry into the world of high-end export houses, a decision driven by the belief that she was joining a system dedicated to the highest expression of artisanal skill.
The dissonance was grim. The artisans whose generational skills formed the luxury foundation were treated as systematically undervalued and "very replaceable" cogs in an extractive, well-oiled machine. Sachan witnessed firsthand the "heartbreaking" conditions talented artisans endured. These were not the romanticized ateliers of marketing brochures but "very dingy, unlivable workshops" in the humid heat of Bombay, where artisans lived, slept, and cooked in the same small, poorly lit spaces where they worked. This reality revealed a system that tolerates poor conditions and was structurally dependent on them. The immense value captured by the brands in European showrooms was directly subsidized by the suppressed costs and diminished dignity of the makers in the supply chain’s plain-sight hidden corners. This was not an oversight. It was the business model.
The defining catalyst for Sachan's philosophy was an industry-wide initiative called the Uttan Pact. It was a non-binding agreement championed by the major luxury houses themselves, a public declaration of their intent to improve the wages and living conditions of artisans. The pact presented the illusion of reform, a shining signal that the industry could self-correct. Acting on this promise, subcontractors and export houses invested capital to upgrade their facilities and processes, becoming fully compliant with the new standards. They prepared for a more ethical future, anticipating the continued business of the brands that had demanded it.
The betrayal was as swift as it was expected. Just months after the implementation phase, Sachan learned that the brands initiating the pact refused to sign it. The rationale was brutally simple: they "didn't want to pay more money". They abandoned the newly compliant factories and continued to channel their production to cheaper, non-compliant workshops, leaving those who had invested in ethical practices at a severe commercial disadvantage. The hypocrisy was numerically evident. The compliant factories would have cost the brands 1.5 times more, a fraction of the 10x premium required to produce the same work in Europe. This was Sachan’s "wake-up call". It was the sober moment she understood that the system’s flaws were not bugs to be patched but core features of its design. It was engineered for extraction. Her mission became clear: to build alternative systems that would center artisans not as "invisible labor," but as the "creative thinkers and creative leaders" they had always been.
No Shortcuts
After diagnosing the system as one of deliberate extraction, Sachan’s work shifted to building an alternative. The foundation of this architecture is not capital or technology. Its most potent and elusive asset is trust. Her methodology applies intentional friction to the process of relationship-building itself, making it the core strategic work. As a "bilingual" leader, she is capable of speaking the market's metric-driven language and the one of the community's lived experience. This dual fluency indicates an innate systemic understanding. It is the artisan’s ground floor for creating the resilient, long-term partnerships necessary for co-creation.
The core of Sachan’s doctrine is rejecting charity as a viable model. Sachan argues that real change happens only when artisans are seen as "humans, as equals, as partners, and not a charity case". This shift from a paternalistic to a peer-to-peer relationship is the essential first step in building agency. The process requires a significant investment of time and a deliberate slowing of transactional speed that directly counters the demands of a restricted commercial mindset. Trust, in her model, "comes from giving it time, from being there". This recognizes the ecosystem is a "very human-to-human" one where shortcuts are fatal. The friction she introduces through controversial exchanges and site visits is the primary source of the system's strength. She cultivates the trust that becomes the currency for all future collaboration.
This process must be rooted in a posture of intellectual humility. When Sachan enters a community, she must adopt the role of a "learner". This stance is a strategic tool for shedding the inherent power imbalance between an outside consultant and a local community. By listening first, she gains access to the unvarnished thoughts, the complex social dynamics, and the unarticulated needs that a top-down analysis cannot uncover. It is an act of respecting the artisans as the experts of their own reality. This patience creates the psychological safety required for an authentic partnership. The community comes to see her as a collaborator who will "take them along while they grow".
Ultimately, this cultivated trust is meant to beget agency. The goal is to build a community’s capacity to a point where its members have a choice. The "choice to be made should sit with them". This includes the choice to become an entrepreneur or a well-paid artisan, and the choice to say no. Sachan acknowledges that communities, particularly those in poorer lands, lack this agency and are more likely to be exploited. The trust she builds is the scaffolding that allows a community to climb from a position of precarity to one of stability. From there, they can negotiate their own terms, confident in the value of their work and their own intrinsic worth.
"It's about seeing them as humans, as equals, as partners, and not a charity case. That's when people really open up."
200M Reasons
Sachan’s doctrine of intentional friction creates an unavoidable tension with the modern investment world. Her methodology prioritizes assets like trust, agency, and cultural integrity. These cannot be easily measured and are frequently undervalued. However, the system she must engage for capital demands quantifiable data as a prerequisite for any conversation. This conflict is identified as a "chicken and egg situation" within the craft sector that causes systemic paralysis. A lack of comprehensive data prevents investment. The absence of investment prevents the mapping and formalization required to produce that data. To operate in this void, a leader must be able to present human economic value written in the language of human experience.
Her approach is to present this holistic, human-centric ledger as a necessary complement to financial metrics. She uses qualitative, story-driven evidence not as a sentimental flourish but as an empirical codified tool. The story of the weavers in Chhattisgarh is a prime example. Due to a lack of work, she explains, "nobody wanted their daughters to marry a weaver". This perception began to change after a social enterprise intervened and created consistent income. This led to a life-altering impact for the entire community, a restoration of dignity and social standing that cannot be captured in a quarterly report or a traditional return on investment calculation. It is a form of value that is hardly visible to a purely financial lens, yet it represents the central measure of a community’s health and future viability. An investor focused solely on spreadsheets would miss the most critical asset being built.
This insistence on context reframes the purpose of data. Sachan is a pragmatist, not an idealist who rejects metrics from the start. She acknowledges the operational reality that "if you can't quantify something, you can't really solve that problem". Her work, particularly with 200M, directly attempts to solve this data deficit by creating "data-led evidence" for the sector. Her methodology, therefore, is not an argument against quantification. It is an argument against incomplete quantification and unrealistic expectations. She seeks to amend the existing model, not abolish it. She understands that impact investors have a "double amount of work" to capture both financial and social returns. Her role ensures social returns are not reduced to simplistic, misleading metrics.
In her model, numbers are not the final answer. They are one part of a much larger story. Her work constantly reminds funders that a business’s impact ledger includes entries for dignity, community cohesion, and cultural continuity. Her doctrine asserts a critical amendment to the data-only mindset. A solution that is only measured in financial terms will inevitably miss the human value it is meant to create.
"If you can't quantify something, you can't really solve that problem, right? So that's the whole issue about the sector."
Cultural Ownership
"Craft is not something that is dead, it's always… It's a language that has to continuously evolve."
Shailja Sachan’s doctrine finds its ultimate application in her philosophy of craft evolution. This final stage of her methodology reveals how intentional friction is deployed to navigate the delicate balance between preservation and progress. She views craft not as a static artifact to be protected behind glass, but as a "living language" that must evolve to survive. This perspective rejects the romantic but unsustainable notion of perfect, unchallenged tradition. It is a pragmatic argument that for a craft to remain relevant and provide a viable livelihood for its community, it must elevate its core to meet the more complex needs of the contemporary world. This belief frames evolution not as a threat to a craft’s identity, but as the only viable path to ensure its continuity.
The friction in this process is the collaborative work of co-creation. Sachan opposes the extractive model, where outsiders issue directives to a passive artisan. This common approach in fast fashion and some development circles treats craft as a mechanical force to be used. It strips the practice of its cultural soul and reduces the artisan to ‘a pair of hands’. Her method takes time, is more complex, and more demanding. It requires the designer to act as a respectful facilitator who first seeks to understand the craft's inherent limitations, its historical context, and its cultural significance. She insists on a dialogue that respects the community's ownership of its design intellectual property. A tribal weave from Chhattisgarh, for example, traditionally uses only red, black, and white because those are the colors available from local natural dyes. To impose a request for yellow without understanding this material’s environmental and cultural reality would be an act of ignorance that violates the craft’s core identity. For Sachan, the creative challenge and joy are found precisely within that limitation.
This measured, respectful approach to evolution is what creates lasting resilience. The Bujodi weavers in Gujarat provide clear proof of concept. They historically wove heavy, coarse wool shawls for local pastoral communities. Had they continued to produce only this single, particular product, the craft would have inevitably died out as modern materials and local economies changed. The weavers, however, engaged in a process of evolution. They began using an indigenous, rain-fed Kala cotton to create contemporary products like stoles, sarees, and garments. This strategic shift allowed them to keep the craft's essential vocabulary and traditional techniques alive while significantly expanding its market and relevance. This is the expression of Sachan's philosophy in action. It is a process that requires patience and sincere respect. It is initially slower and more fraught with challenges than industrial automation, but its outcomes are unique. It creates a future where craft is not a relic of the past, but a thriving, dynamic part of a community’s present and future.
This capacity for evolution, however, is not universally given. Sachan’s experience is honest: a community's ability to engage in healthy, agentic evolution is a product of its economic and social standing. The artisans of Gujarat, historically well-off and exposed to global markets through design fairs and collaborations, are "excited by the idea of evolution." They have the confidence and the agency to experiment. This is not the case for more marginalized communities in poorer areas, who have been historically overlooked. For them, a proposal to change a traditional design may be met with vehement refusal or a resigned willingness to act as mere labor, executing orders without creative ownership. This highlights the final layer of Sachan’s work. Fostering the evolution of a living language first requires the long, patient work of building the trust, agency, and stability that makes such an evolution possible.
What I learned from Shailja Sachan
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Friction is a Strategic Asset. The modern obsession with speed and frictionless efficiency is a liability in human-centric systems. A leader’s most valuable tool can be the deliberate introduction of friction through deep thinking and difficult questions.
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Diagnose the Design, Not the Damage. Extraction systems are often not broken; they are a feature of the design. Meaningful change requires building new, alternative architectures, not just applying superficial repairs to a fundamentally flawed model.
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Trust is a Hard Currency. In communities with a history of exploitation, trust is the most valuable and elusive asset. It can only be cultivated through the slow, patient work of partnership, a process that rejects the paternalism of charity and builds agency.
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The Data-Only Mindset is a Liability. A balance sheet that can only measure profit and loss is blind to the most critical indicators of a system’s health: dignity, agency, and cultural continuity. A leader must argue for the value of the unquantifiable.
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True Preservation Requires Evolution. Craft is a living language, not a static artifact. Its survival depends on a respectful, collaborative evolution guided by the community that owns it. A leader’s role is to facilitate this process, not to dictate it.
Comprehension Challenge: Shailja Sachan
Philosophy
Shailja Sachan’s philosophy is a masterclass in challenging systems that are not broken but are "designed that way" for extraction. Her doctrine of "intentional friction" rejects the pursuit of speed and scale, instead focusing on building trust-based, co-creative alternatives that cultivate value over time. This challenge tests your ability to deploy this doctrine within a highly optimized corporate machine where human dignity has been systematically designed out of the equation.
The Scenario
Imagine ‘Priya,’ a rising star in the operations division of a major Indian logistics company. The company is celebrated for its hyper-efficient, technologically advanced warehouse system that powers last-mile delivery. This system, a "well-oiled machine," is the core of the company's profitability and is lauded as a model of modern business.
During a routine audit, Priya uncovers the system's hidden "design feature." Its efficiency relies on a scheduling algorithm that keeps a significant portion of its female workforce on rolling, short-term contracts, perpetually denying them the job security and benefits afforded to permanent staff. The system is perfectly legal and immensely profitable. The human cost is invisible to the company's balance sheet and celebrated by its investors.
Priya proposes a new system that would provide a clear path to permanent employment. Her superiors reject the idea. They argue it would introduce unacceptable "friction" into their model, increasing costs, reducing flexibility, and damaging the company's competitive advantage. They tell her the current system works perfectly and is not her problem.
The Task
Drawing on Shailja Sachan’s philosophy, what is Priya’s imperative?
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How can she reframe her proposal not as an act of charity, but as a crucial form of risk mitigation against future labor instability and brand damage?
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How can she build a data-driven argument that honors the unquantifiable assets of a stable, dignified workforce, effectively creating a more holistic "balance sheet" for her superiors?
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What is the first, small-scale "no shortcuts" step she could take to prove that building trust with the workforce is a long-term strategic asset, not just a short-term cost?