By Zahid Hussain | PGP 2012
I’ve always liked the idea of living many lives in one. At one point, I genuinely imagined having 40 different careers, a year each, as a librarian, an archaeologist, a game designer, a lyricist, a town planner, and many more. Sounds exciting but very soon I realized it’s not practical. You can’t master a field in a year, and jumping around doesn’t let you build depth or meaningfully apply what you learn.
The closest I’ve come to that dream is through consulting. Seven years at EY, and then seven years at Sideways, an interdisciplinary creative collective, gave me a front-row seat to a wide range of problem statements. From detergents to dairy equipment, FMCG to financial products, it’s been a constant shift of context. In many ways, it’s the most realistic version of that “multiple careers” idea.
EY trained me to think in structure. Break problems down, build hypotheses, use data, aim for clarity. It’s rigorous and valuable, and I wouldn’t trade that foundation for anything. But over time, I grew increasingly curious about a different layer, the part that doesn’t fit neatly into frameworks. The part where the right answer is not unique or unanimous.
A sabbatical gave me the space to explore that curiosity. I worked with a clean cookstove company, trying to drive adoption in real-world settings. The brief was simple: get people to switch to a better product. The reality was far more complex. People don’t make decisions in easy-to-decipher ways. They rely on habit, trust, social cues, and personal context.
When I moved into building Sideways, that gap became the core of the work. It was about diagnosing why a solution that is objectively better is still not adopted. That gap, between being better and being chosen, became impossible to ignore. And with it came a shift in philosophy: don’t start with the channel, the campaign, or the touchpoint. Start with the person. Understand what makes something feel easy, what they’re resisting and why, before you ever think about how to reach them.
The question shifted from “What do we deploy?” to “What makes a solution actually work for people?” It’s a subtle difference, but it changes everything. How you diagnose, who you talk to, what you design, and in what order. The best solutions are the ones designed to reduce resistance, remove friction, and make the right choice feel like the obvious one.
I’ve come to think of this as “creative sciences”, using structured thinking to understand behaviour, and creative thinking to design solutions. Making adoption easier isn’t a soft idea. It isn’t easy, but it is endlessly interesting. I am often asked about my uncommon career choice shift. I have to admit that it was an experiment and leap of faith that I indulged in. But to quote J.R.R. Tolkien, ‘Not all those who wander are lost’.
EY gave me the scaffolding. Sideways gave me the freedom to figure out what to build with it. And between them I had more than 40 experiences. Including an opportunity to design and market word games, now live on WordIt! App on Android. I am still just learning to see. But changing lenses can be quite a spectacle.
