A future built on openness: how Teal Unicorn is redesigning management in Asia and beyond
In the years following the global pandemic, few consulting firms have had as consistent and far-reaching an impact asTeal Unicorn. Founded by Rob England and Dr. Cherry Vũ, the New Zealand-based company has become a catalyst for organisational change across Asia, particularly in Vietnam. Teal Unicorn’s approach, known as Open Management, combines agile thinking with cultural depth. It focuses on decentralising authority, building transparency, and equipping teams with the tools to take full responsibility for their work. Through coaching, simulations, and long-term advisory relationships, they help organisations challenge outdated assumptions and adopt more adaptive ways of working.
This blog post is part of 80+ case studies of progressive organizations we created for the ZeroDX awards 2025. These organizations embody the principles of RenDanHeYi in their work structures:
Zero Distance to customer: Decision what to build is based on insights from the marketplace
Autonomy: Small teams with full decision-making autonomy enable speed in execution
Shared Rewards: Everyone in the micro-enterprise participates in its financial success.
The company’s effectiveness comes from the complementarity of its founders. Rob England is a systems thinker with a strong background in IT service management and business agility. Dr. Cherry Vũ brings deep regional insight and academic expertise, with degrees in public policy, law, and culture. She has worked closely with Vietnamese leaders to translate management principles into practices that fit local realities.Together, they help organisations embed practical changes that lead to lasting cultural shifts.
Their work spans industries and organisational sizes, each case providing a distinct lens on how core principles of RenDanHeYi, such as decentralised decision-making, team autonomy, and user focus can be adapted beyond manufacturing and into diverse sectors. At Wind, a Vietnamese real estate company, rigid hierarchies and individualcommissions had created silos and slowed progress. With support from Teal Unicorn, the company removed team leads and introduced flexible collaboration around each property deal. Teams were encouraged to self-select and share skills, applying the Shu-Ha-Ri model to balance experience and learning. What began as informal experiments quickly delivered results, prompting the CEO to back the change. Within months, staff reported greater ownership, faster decisions, and improved income. The shift reflected a decisive move toward decentralised, user-oriented, and capability-driven teams.
EVN Finance (EVNFC), a former state-owned enterprise, turned to Teal Unicorn to break away from rigid structures and accelerate responsiveness. The leadership team recognised the need to empower those closest to the work. WithDr. Vũ’s coaching, CEO Nguyễn Hoàng Hải introduced Open Management practices that enabled co-created strategy, servant leadership, and team-based performance. The company visualised its operations using Kanban and Obeya, reinforcing transparency and cross-functional coordination. Shu-Ha-Ri informed how skills were developed across teams. These shifts echoed RenDanHeYi’s platform-based support and user-driven operations. As Hải described it, letting go created space for his staff to lead and for himself to think morestrategically. Six months later, the company saw double-digit credit growth, alongside a renewed sense of purpose across teams.
PCS Group, a logistics provider, partnered with Teal Unicorn to shift from a profit-first mindset toward a people-firstculture. Inspired by Open Management, Chair Ms. Le Thi Thu and Director Mr. Do Vu Duong worked to embed autonomy, lean operations, and customer co-creation into daily routines. The transformation empowered staff and invited customers into service innovation, leading to faster adaptation andstronger morale. In this environment, teams became micro-scale engines of value, closely aligned with RenDanHeYi’s idea of user-facing microenterprises. PCS Post now serves leading brands and is celebrated as Vietnam’s first agile express delivery firm. “Innovation,” said Ms. Thu, “is not an initiative. It is our foundation.”
Across these examples, a coherent pattern takes shape. Organisations that once relied on top-down structures and siloed communication began opening up decision-making, distributing leadership, and redesigning teams around value creation. Several founders closed expensive offices, simplified reporting layers, and eliminated redundant control mechanisms. Others replaced rigid KPIs with team-based performance feedback or restructured teams around shared skill development. These were not theoretical experiments. They were practical, sometimes urgent responses to complexity, made possible by leaders who were willing to step aside and trust their people.
As part of its own evolution, Teal Unicorn also integrates artificial intelligence into its daily practice. Their custom language model, Om, is trained on the company’s writings and assists with research, content development, strategydesign, and facilitation. Om co-authored sections of their recent book, Leading the Open Enterprise, and supports the team in creating scalable tools for clients. Rob England and Dr. Cherry Vũ describe AI not as a replacement forthinking, but as a force multiplier. "It amplifies curiosity, exposes blind spots, and frees time for the slow art ofwisdom-making." The firm also insists on keeping humans in the loop for any AI-powered decision-making thataffects people. Their approach is both cautious and imaginative, ensuring that digital tools serve learning and collaboration rather than replacing them.
Throughout their engagements, Teal Unicorn reinforces principles that align closely with RenDanHeYi. While they do not formally adopt the model, their work consistently embodies decentralised decision-making, end-to-end accountability, user focus, lean operations, and team-based autonomy. These principles are translated into practices suited to each organisation’s context. One insight Dr. Vũ often shares is that the hardest part of transformation is not introducing new tools, but letting go of control. When leaders step back, they create space for others to grow in skill, confidence, and initiative.
What also sets Teal Unicorn apart is its incremental approach. Change is rarely imposed all at once. Instead, organisations are encouraged to start small, through experiments, simulations, and team-led initiatives, and expandwhat works. The concept of "safe enough to try" is central. It allows teams to test new ways of working without fear of failure. Many of the leaders Teal Unicorn supports are women who seek not just to improve performance, but to build healthier, more human workplaces. In these stories, transformation often begins with a shift in mindset long before it becomes structural.
From Hanoi to Wellington, Teal Unicorn is building a practice rooted in curiosity, experimentation, and respect for localculture. Rather than replicating models, they listen closely to each organisation’s context and co-create the smallest next step that unlocks progress. Their strength lies not in ideology, but in invitation, inviting leaders to pause, reflect, and build workplaces where peoplegrow as they deliver value. This grounded, adaptive way of working is where their influence is most visible, and most needed.
