Who We Are

The name Balance Partners reflects that all good things in life and business are a matter of balance. For example:

  • Business success is a matter of both strategy and culture (we disagree that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” – both are essential and complementary).

  • Leadership is a matter of many balances, including both direction-setting and empowering others, achieving results now while also building for the future, maintaining credibility yet also sharing vulnerability, finding clarity while embracing uncertainty

  • True productivity requires both hard work and taking the time to rest and reflect.

  • Innovation and creativity are best achieved by combining focus with playful and iterative exploration.

And on a personal note, we offer a balanced partnership ourselves: two people with complementary backgrounds and styles, male and female, Indian spirituality and Australian pragmatism, corporate agility and military rigour, unified in purpose and passion for our work.

Trusted advisers: strategy leadership, culture

Our brand is a bee and a lavender flower, chosen for their beauty and brightness, and because they typify collaboration. The bee pollinates the lavender, transferring genetic material between flowers to enable fertilisation and seed production. The lavender provides the bee with nectar (an energy source), pollen (a protein source), and oil with microbial properties for protection from disease and parasites. When the bee returns to its hive bearing these goods it signals its find and leads others back to gain the same benefits.

Balance Partners is the trusted adviser for leaders navigating complexity.

Two colleagues collaborating and writing on a large sheet of paper at a table, using colorful markers.

Larger consulting firms have their place, but in our case we aim to be distinctive as trusted advisers with a small footprint. We do our best work when we work closely with the C-Suite (or equivalent) as trusted advisers, including supporting Board engagements. For the daily work, our approach is to work integrally with our clients’ people, cost-effectively maintaining our presence at the level and duration required for sustained outcomes.

We bring more than 60 years of personal experience to our work, which provides:

  • Deep knowledge of many different contexts

  • Personal gravitas and relatability

  • Pattern recognition that allows us to go below the surface to spot symptoms and diagnose problems with precision.

We are lifelong learners, with many formal qualifications plus the knowledge gained from a vast and continually expanding library of literature.

We like to engage deeply in the work personally and we don’t seek to leverage our expertise by bringing larger teams of inexperienced consultants. Our leverage comes from working with our clients’ own teams, helping them to engage across the organisation, co-creating the answers together, setting them up to implement the solutions themselves, and helping them to grow along the way.

We bring with us the benefit of years of experience with McKinsey & Company, the world’s premier management consulting firm. This includes a remarkably effective approach to problem-solving, and the rigour of a consulting toolkit that ensures projects run smoothly and reliably.

We inevitably find that ‘hard’ solutions must be complemented by attention to the human side of organisational performance – both are essential. Hence why our offerings are complementary, and we can tailor our services according to your needs.

Our Values

  • Authenticity.

    We bring our true selves to every engagement, operating with honesty, transparency, and integrity in all we do, including when difficult conversations are required.

    “Let the beauty of what you love be what you do”

    Rumi

  • Service.

    We will create thoughtful, tailored solutions that genuinely benefit our clients. Once we commit, we will do whatever it takes to have the required impact.

    “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”

    Mahatma Gandhi

  • Kindness.

    We build relationships founded on empathy, respect, and understanding, fostering collaboration and trust in every interaction.

    “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”

    Robin Williams

Meet The Team

Shilpa Limsay

  • Shilpa is the co-founder of Balance Partners, and she brings 30 years of global commerce and leadership development experience from her work with organisations across the public and private sectors. She has multiple qualifications as an Applied Behavioural Scientist, Leadership Facilitator, Coach, and Counsellor. Shilpa’s approach is to facilitate mindset shifts in leaders and their teams, so that they realise their potential and can deliver transformational business impact effortlessly.

    After starting her career in management consulting, Shilpa found her calling was to help senior leaders fulfil their potential. Following this passion, she founded Sunbeam, her India-based leadership and coaching business that has operated successfully since 2005. Sunbeam has impacted over 2000 leaders across industries including petroleum, agriculture, banking and finance, IT, logistics, agriculture, chemical, start-ups, steel, cement, consumer goods, hotel chains, infrastructure, shipping, pharma, the auto industry, telecom and electricity providers.

    Additional to her own business, Shilpa was sought out by McKinsey & Company in 2012 to help grow their leadership practice. She has worked with the firm for 12 years as a leadership facilitator and executive coach, designing and delivering leadership programs for clients all over the globe, enabling multibillion-dollar mergers and acquisitions, business expansions and organisational transformations.

    Shilpa’s work has taken her across Europe, Africa, Australia, and Asia consulting and delivering a total of 16 leadership programs, including over 5 500 hours of C-Suite coaching experience, 10 000 hours of other executive coaching experience and 2 700 hours of leadership group facilitation.

    Qualifications

    Bachelor of Commerce, Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai

    International Coaching Federation (ICF) certified International Coach from New Ventures West, San Francisco

    Leadership Embodiment Coach from “Leadership Embodiment” San Francisco

    International Coach from NEWS Coaching, Switzerland

    CEO/Business Coach certified by Coaching Foundation of India

    Applied Behavioural Scientist from the Sumedhas Academy for Human Context

    Integral Somatic Practitioner Coach, trained by Chris Balsley of USA

    Psychotherapist from Parivarthan (affiliate of the British Counselling Association)

    Trained in working with the subconscious mind using psychodynamic theory—primarily based on Carl Jung’s work

    Accredited Leadership Circle Coach

    Accredited Hogan Certified Coach

Rupert Hoskin

  • Rupe is the co-founder of Balance Partners, and he brings 32 years of global experience as a leadership practitioner in multiple sectors, followed by three years as a culture and leadership expert with McKinsey & Company. He had a distinguished career as an Army officer, during which he often took the road less travelled, satisfying his curiosity and thirst for adventure by taking many sabbaticals and secondments to pursue opportunities outside Defence.  Surprisingly, for what could be viewed as a conservative institution, the Army supported this, and continued to provide promotions and roles that drew on the value of these diverse experiences.

    Rupe progressed to the rank of Brigadier, and his military service included command of the 3rd Combat Engineer Regiment, Defence Attaché to France, Algeria and Morocco, Commandant of the Royal Military College of Australia, Director-General Army Leadership, Defence Adviser to the Joint Standing Committee for Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade in the Parliament of Australia, and deployments to Bosnia, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Iraq.

    Outside his military career, Rupe deployed to Niger as a water engineer with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Niger (with Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief, RedR), and has had various other engineering roles, including with John Holland Construction for Woodside in Dampier, with Aoki-Soletanche for the Jubilee Line Extension Project in London, and several client-side Project Director roles for Defence infrastructure.

    Since leaving the Army in 2020, Rupe has worked with the Business Council of Australia’s BizRebuild bushfire recovery initiative, then with McKinsey & Company as an Associate Partner. With McKinsey, he served clients on strategy, culture and leadership studies across diverse sectors and geographies, including telecommunications, banking, mining, transport, R&D, agribusiness, insurance, and Defence.  

    Rupe’s qualifications include Bachelor of Engineering (Maritime) (Honours) from UNSW/ADFA, Master of Defence Studies from the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College, Master of Business Administration from Latrobe University, Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a Certified Coach with the Institute of Executive Coaching and Leadership. He is a Chartered Professional Engineer (Civil), and a Fellow and Engineering Executive of Engineers Australia. He is a Member of the Order of Australia, an Officer in the US Legion of Merit, and a Knight of the French National Order of Merit.

 FAQs

  • Balance Partners is primarily based in Canberra, with a presence also in Bangalore. We travel frequently and have a network that allows us to support clients across Australia, India and internationally.

  • Yes, and this is our preferred approach, especially at the start of a project and for workshops and key events. We usually find that hybrid work is effective at other times.

  • We will meet with you to learn about your needs and discuss how we can help. We will then send a Proposal describing our approach, what we will need from you, and a fee. We find this generates useful clarity, and can be iterative. We would then engage under your preferred procurement system - Purchase Order or Professional Services Contract. 

  • Please get in touch to discuss fees. Where possible, we prefer to work on a fixed fee basis – setting shared expectations early with our clients, then simply doing whatever is required to deliver the outcomes. 

  • We are available for select tender SME procurements, subject to Departmental policies. Formal membership of Australian Government panels is pending.

  • Yes (Rupert) - details available on request.