Sichen Ying: Human Systems Architect
My work is to design the invisible structures that house our most important work. I apply architectural principles to the most complex systems I know: our minds, our teams, and our businesses. The goal is to create new ways of thinking for a world drowning in complexity.
Background & The Origin of a Method
My professional career began in commercial architecture and design. To be candid, I was never the most natural networker in that large corporate world. My inclination was always to go deeper into the tools and the systems themselves. I was driven to understand the parts of the process I didn't know, which led me to a fascination with complex platforms like Building Information Modeling (BIM).
That experience was a profound awakening. It taught me that my true strength wasn't in navigating the organization, but in understanding its deep structure. My supposed shortcomings were the very things that cultivated my unique skill: a highly-developed eye for finding the foundational problems in any given system.
A Unique Diagnostic Engine
This is the core of what I offer. My mind is, by nature, neurodivergent—a system of immense structural tension optimized to deconstruct complexity and identify the hidden fractures that others miss. I have honed this innate, problem-focused process into a precise diagnostic tool. It is an engine for first-principles inquiry that gets to the root of a challenge with unconventional speed and clarity.
It is the practice of seeing structure in the storm.
Methodology: Tension is the Raw Material
Most strategies are designed to avoid conflict. My methodology does the opposite.
I use the points of greatest tension in a system—the friction between teams, the conflict in priorities—as the primary diagnostic signal. This tension is not a problem to be solved; it is the raw material that, under pressure, reveals the true, underlying structure of the challenge. My work facilitates a process where this tension is transformed into a source of profound clarity and potent innovation.
The Offer: A Partnership in Clarity
I offer access to a specialized diagnostic tool: my mind.
This is not a traditional consulting engagement. A partnership is a limited, high-impact inquiry where we apply this unique cognitive lens to one of your most complex, "wicked" problems. The goal is not to deliver a pre-packaged solution, but to provide you and your team with a fundamentally clearer and more powerful understanding of the problem itself.
The deliverable is not a report; it is a new, more resilient mental model for moving forward.