A Practice Built Around
the Considered Written Word
Almanac Bureau works with leadership groups in Malaysia to produce the written documents that hold an organisation together across time.
Back to HomeHow Almanac Bureau Came to Be
Almanac Bureau was founded in Kuala Lumpur by a small group of people who had spent years working alongside leadership teams in Malaysian organisations — sitting in strategy sessions, helping draft communications, and watching what happened when decisions were made without a written record to return to.
The pattern they saw repeated itself across sectors. A leadership group would meet, discuss important questions, and reach something resembling alignment. Six months later, the people in the room would remember things differently. New members of the leadership group would have no reference point at all. The work of re-establishing shared understanding consumed time that could have gone elsewhere.
The founding team's view was simple: the problem was not that organisations lacked capable people or sound thinking. The problem was that the thinking was not written down in a form that could be passed around, referred to, and built upon. An oral tradition is fine for small teams in the same room. It does not hold as organisations grow.
Almanac Bureau was built to address this directly. The name was chosen deliberately — an almanac is a reference document produced with regularity, intended to be kept and consulted. That is precisely what we produce: reference documents that leadership groups can keep on the shelf and open again when they need to recall where they are and why.
Since opening our office on Jalan Ampang, we have worked with a range of organisations across Malaysia — professional services firms, family-owned businesses, regional subsidiaries, and civic organisations. The engagements vary in scope, but the approach does not: structured conversation, careful drafting, editorial refinement, and a finished document delivered on time.
"To help leadership groups in Malaysia build a written record of how they work and why — so that memory does not depend on who happens to be in the room."
Almanac Bureau, Kuala Lumpur
The Almanac Bureau Team
Razif Hamidon
Razif leads the Annual Reference Volume practice, drawing on fifteen years of experience advising leadership groups across Malaysian professional services and regional manufacturing firms.
Siu Wei Tan
Siu Wei shapes the editorial standards of every document Almanac Bureau produces, with a background in long-form corporate communications and a particular focus on clarity of structure.
Nurul Ain Ismail
Nurul Ain manages client relationships and oversees the facilitation component of our Quarterly Editorial Pack engagements, with particular experience in mid-sized Bumiputera-led enterprises.
How We Work
Non-Disclosure as Standard
Every engagement is covered by a mutual non-disclosure agreement before any conversation takes place. Client material is not referenced in our own communications without written consent.
Editorial Review Process
Every document passes through at least two editorial reviews before it reaches the client — once for content accuracy and once for language and structure. We do not deliver first drafts as final documents.
Defined Engagement Scope
We agree the scope, timeline, and deliverable in writing before work begins. This protects the client's time and ensures the engagement stays on course.
Data Handling Protocols
Documents and interview materials are stored in client-controlled folders. We comply with Malaysia's Personal Data Protection Act 2010 and do not retain client data beyond the engagement period without agreement.
Named Engagement Team
The team working on your engagement is named at the outset. You will not find that your account has been handed to a junior subcontractor midway through without prior discussion.
Plain Language Commitment
Our documents are written to be read — not to demonstrate complexity. We do not introduce jargon or frameworks that obscure rather than clarify. The standard is: can the intended reader understand it on first reading?
Business Consulting Grounded in Written Practice
Most consulting engagements end with a presentation. Almanac Bureau's engagements end with a document — something that can be printed, distributed, filed, and returned to. This distinction shapes everything about how we work and what we value.
Our consultants come from backgrounds in corporate communications, organisational design, and editorial work. We are not strategy theorists who have never run a budget or managed a team. We have worked inside organisations, and we understand the practical pressure that leadership groups operate under in Malaysia's business environment.
The Malaysian context matters to us. Leadership conversations in local organisations often carry implicit understandings that would not survive a verbatim transcript. Part of our work is to listen carefully enough to identify what is actually being agreed, not just what is being said — and then to write it in a form that reflects the real agreement rather than a sanitised summary.
We work across the full range of ownership structures common to Malaysian business — publicly listed companies, government-linked entities, family-controlled firms, and foreign subsidiaries managing a regional function from Kuala Lumpur. Each structure brings different dynamics to the leadership conversation, and our approach adapts accordingly.
Almanac Bureau does not take on more engagements than it can serve well. We keep the team small and the client list manageable. This is a deliberate choice — not a constraint we apologise for, but a standard we hold to because the quality of the work depends on it.
Start the Conversation
If what we do sounds relevant to where your organisation is right now, reach out. A short scoping conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Contact Almanac Bureau