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Cracking the Agility Code

about

A Unique Combination of Insights at the Intersection of Agility Experiences in 3 Worlds

In the Real World

In the Business World

In the Business World

 I started my career as a Petroleum Engineer with Shell International working on onshore and offshore oil & gas drilling rigs.   Now, I love studying everyday agile leaders in the real world who face the agility challenge everyday (fighter pilots, special forces, fire fighters  and others), often with life and death consequences, to understand their secrets.

In the Business World

In the Business World

In the Business World

After an MBA at London Business School, I joined the Aerospace Industry as a Program Manager of complex projects, became an Executive and CEO of multiple small to medium sized businesses and ended up running the Aerospace Division of a British Public Company, Spirent plc.  Now, I love working with a diversity of businesses across a diversity of industries.  

In the Advisory World

In the Business World

In the Advisory World

I then went independent for nearly 20 years already,  as an author, keynote speaker, facilitator, coach and board member, including 15 years as a CEO peer group chair and speaker with Vistage Worldwide for small to medium sized enterprise CEOs and Executives.  Now, I also love being in fractional roles, being on boards and chairing boards. 

Interpreter

Interpreter

In the Advisory World

Interpreting the secrets of those facing real world agility challenges everyday (fighter pilots, special forces, fire fighters, offshore oil & gas drilling rigs and others).

Translator

Interpreter

Facilitator

Translating them into terms relevant to the business world and how enterprise agility is being challenged everyday.

Facilitator

Interpreter

Facilitator

Facilitating CEOs, Executives and their teams running small to medium sized businesses and facing real world agility challenges everyday.

Provocative

Provocative

Provocative

Busting Myths to Develop Agile Mindsets

Profound

Provocative

Provocative

Exploring Mysteries to Develop Agile Skill-Sets

Practical

Provocative

Practical

Leveraging the Magic of Agile Tool-sets

The Myths

The Mysteries

Practical

The Mysteries

The Mysteries

The Mysteries

The Magic

The Mysteries

The Mysteries

Let me introduce myself.  In 10 minutes you will begin to hear about my perspectives on agility and how I arrived at the intersection of 3 worlds, specializing in the agility challenges faced by CEOs and Executives running small to medium sized businesses.  Join me for 10 minutes In the Driving Seat of your business!

Read my interviews

Ideamench

Authority Magazine

Ideamench

That was a great interview with Ideamench ... in my role as President (aka Chief Agility Officer)




Read Interview

Inspirery

Authority Magazine

Ideamench

 That was fun doing an interview with Inspirery ... in my role as President (aka Chief Agility Officer). 



Read Interview

Authority Magazine

Authority Magazine

Authority Magazine

That was a fun and long interview to do with Authority Magazine!  Wow, it was really comprehensive and joined up a lot of dots more clearly for me than ever before.  It is really the backbone of my next book!

Read Interview

specializing in the agility challenges of ceos/executives running small to medium sized enterprises

From the CEO Top-Down & From Every Individual Bottom-Up

the 5 new roles of everyday agile leaders

  1. Chief Chaos Coach
  2. Chief Triage Facilitator
  3. Chief Insight Trainer
  4. Chief Luck Consultant
  5. Chief Journey Architect


Read More:  The 5 New Roles

are you an agile leadership presence or a fragile leadership presence?

Diversity of Experience

Oil & Gas

Automotive

Oil & Gas

  • Geophysicist
  • Petroleum Engineer (Holland)

Aerospace

Automotive

Oil & Gas

  • Program Management, Commercial Management & Product Support Management of Complex Projects and Programs (UK)
  • Sales & Marketing VP (UK)
  • CEO (UK and USA)
  • Divisional CEO (USA)

Automotive

Automotive

Author & Keynote Speaker

  • External Board Member of a Family Business for 15 Years
  • Comprising 3 Automotive Dealerships (Toyota, Hyundai, Subaru)

Author & Keynote Speaker

CEO Peer Advisory Groups & Board Member/Board Chair

Author & Keynote Speaker

  • Book:  "Wheel$pin:  The Agile Executive's Manifesto" (2011)
  • Book: "Cracking the Agility Code:  The 5 Roles of Everyday Agile Leaders" (work in progress)
  • Various Keynote Topics

CEO Peer Advisory Groups & Board Member/Board Chair

CEO Peer Advisory Groups & Board Member/Board Chair

CEO Peer Advisory Groups & Board Member/Board Chair

  • Vistage Chair of 4 Groups for 15 Years, with 300+ CEO/Executive members, facilitating more than 500 group meetings and 2000 one-to-one coaching sessions.
  • Vistage Speaker to more than 400 Groups of more than 5000 members in 5 Countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Argentina), and acknowledged as the Global Community's Thought Leading Agility Expert
  • Multiple Boards as Board Member and Board Chair

Facilitating Teams, Coaching & Mentoring

CEO Peer Advisory Groups & Board Member/Board Chair

CEO Peer Advisory Groups & Board Member/Board Chair

  • External Facilitator, Coach & Mentor
  • Fractional President & Chief Agility Officer
  • CEO Coach

Entrepreneurial

Mid Market Companies

Mid Market Companies

Including:

  • Adams Wine Group
  • Cartridge World
  • Daily Steals
  • D'Style Furniture Designs
  • Guild Brands
  • HealthAware
  • Inverge
  • MindFlow Design
  • MOGL
  • MyOffice
  • Nixon
  • PenChecks
  • Pilchuck Vet
  • Plidek
  • Total Gym
  • Trinity Grading
  • VerTechs Enterprises


Mid Market Companies

Mid Market Companies

Mid Market Companies

Including:

  • Burnham Real Estate
  • Clark
  • D&K Engineering
  • Dimension One Spas
  • DuraBuilt Windows
  • Harris
  • Millie & Severseon Construction
  • Napoleon BBQs & Fireplaces
  • New Resources Consulting
  • Online Trading Academy
  • PowerPlan
  • Precision Engineering
  • Quartus Engineering
  • Stellar BPS (Australia)
  • Stellar Solutions
  • VIX Technologies (Australia)
  • WCAS

Corporations

Mid Market Companies

Trade & Professional Organizations; Not-For-Profits

Including:

  • BAT (Canada)
  • Blommer Chocolate
  • Carmeuse (Belgium)
  • Constellation Brands
  • Eli Global
  • Etex (Belgium)
  • Gen-Probe
  • Givaudan (Switzerland)
  • Rodan & Fields
  • Soge Bank (Haiti)
  • Sony
  • Sun Products
  • Uponor (Finland)

Trade & Professional Organizations; Not-For-Profits

Trade & Professional Organizations; Not-For-Profits

Trade & Professional Organizations; Not-For-Profits

Including:

  • Direct Marketing Association
  • EO
  • Farm Journal Top Producer Executive Network
  • Vistage
  • YPO

Not-For-Profits:

  • Too numerous to mention.  My way of giving back has been to help not-for-profits become more agile with their strategy and execution in service of their mission.
  • I am particularly proud of my agile journey with Junior Achievement of San Diego

Business Schools

Trade & Professional Organizations; Not-For-Profits

Boards of Advisors/Directors

Including:

  • University of San Diego School of Business, Adjunct Faculty for MSEL (MS in Executive Leadership) & MSGL (MS in Global Leadership)
  • Vlerick Business School (Belgium)

Boards of Advisors/Directors

Trade & Professional Organizations; Not-For-Profits

Boards of Advisors/Directors

Including:

  • Junior Achievement of San Diego
  • Total Gym (Sports Equipment)
  • Frank Motors (Automotive, Family Business)
  • VerTechs Enterprises (Aerospace)
  • HealthAware (Health Software)
  • FIT4MOM/Stroller Strides (Fitness Franchise)
  • Quartus Engineering (Product Development)
  • University of San Diego MSGL (MS in Global Leadership)
  • University of San Diego Burnham Moores Real Estate Center

I am blessed to work with so many CEOs & executives in so many Businesses & industries globally

my story in three words: AGILE BREAKTHROUGH leadership

Imagine it's the middle of the night. It's freezing cold. There is horizontal snow driving in your face. We are hundreds of miles offshore, at sea, on an oil and gas drilling rig, and we're in the middle of a hefty operation running heavy equipment in the hole. That's where I started my career, as a Petroleum Engineer, working for Shell as a 21-year-old. I am English, had left the UK and moved to Holland. I joined Shell’s international staff as an expatriate, potentially never ever going back to the UK. I would get posted from country to country to country, as indeed some of my lifelong friends did. I spent eighteen months on onshore, and six months on offshore drilling rigs. Week on, week off. Helicopter out, helicopter back. When you are on, you are on, 24/7. You sleep if and when you can; It was a great experience, the closest thing I ever got to a boot camp. I found out a lot about myself.


Leadership

My degree was in geophysics which is a combination of math, geography, and physics. I wanted to work for one of the oil majors. However, after my two years on drilling rigs, when they brought me into the office and put me on a technical track, I realized that wasn't for me. So after a total of 5 years with Shell, I quit and went to get my MBA at the London Business School for 2 years. That's when I knew I wanted to go into leadership in British industry, not least as I had never worked in my homeland since graduating. I got offered a job with an aerospace company in the industrial heartland of Great Britain—Birmingham—an area referred to as the “black country” for its industrial roots. Pretty much everyone from my MBA thought I was crazy to move there, but I was committed to finding my path. I started out in Program Management and did well, becoming Product Support Manager, then Commercial Manager and then getting promoted to become the Sales & Marketing VP. Four years later, I was headhunted away to become the CEO/President of a subsidiary of a £500-million-per-year British public corporation called Bowthorpe which later renamed itself Spirent. 


Breakthrough

I knew I was walking into a turnaround situation, but I quickly discovered it was a lot worse than I realized! The business was losing money and breaking down culturally. My career as a CEO/President was on the line, and was at risk of derailing before it got started, so I knew that I was going to have to be a breakthrough leader, be agile, move fast, and find a balance of the and-proposition of being both entrepreneurial and working inside the bureaucracy of a corporate environment. It worked, and I got promoted to run the whole Aerospace Division, which is what brought my wife and I to Wichita Kansas, and then San Diego, a year and a half after that.   Two years later, 9/11 happened, the NASDAQ had crashed, the dot com bubble had burst, the technology boom was over, and Aerospace was in the doldrums, but I was lucky that I had managed to get my green card 3 months before 9/11. For me, luck is a lot less random than you think!  


Agile

So I had options and in the Spring of 2002, I decided to take the risk of taking the leap to do my own thing and follow my passion for breakthrough leadership. I built a consulting business called Sherpa Alliance Inc. My mantra was load carrying support for mountainous breakthrough journeys. As I immersed myself in the challenges faced by CEOs these days across a broad spectrum of businesses and industries, I evolved my passionate purpose from breakthrough leadership to “AGILE” breakthrough leadership. As part of my portfolio of activities, I became involved with Vistage as both a chair and speaker for peer groups of CEOs, becoming known globally as the community’s agility expert and writing a book. That was a mountainous breakthrough journey all of its own! All of these experiences are somewhere in the mix of who I am today.


Bigger on the Inside

In particular, when I look back on my experience on drilling rigs, I realized I learned a lot about stamina, resilience, thinking on my feet, quality, safety, crisis management and preventative thinking. The consequences were too dire otherwise. You know what I mean if you have seen the movie, “Deepwater Horizon” telling the story of the BP Gulf Oil Spill disaster. Because I had lived the life and understood the terminology, I read thousands of pages of all of the investigation reports and watched all of the testimonies and documentaries. It’s also why I am so oriented to developing young people and helping to get their “bigness” out. It's a fundamental belief I have that people are bigger on the inside than they seem on the outside. Some interviewer saw something in me as a 20 year-old—fresh-faced and soon-to-be graduate—and thought I was made of the right stuff, even though I wasn't sure myself. They put me out on drilling rigs at age 21, and I learned fast. 


The Journey

It’s a tough journey. It’s a journey to mastery; a roller coaster ride with long plateaus and S-curves, where things get worse before they get better. It’s about moving through rather than bouncing off complexity. And it’s emotional. Scary at times. When you are tackling big breakthrough things you may experience inertia and even active resistance. That’s just normal human nature. Embrace it! Embrace the pivots. Embrace the messiness. Embrace the discomfort. Embrace it all! Standing in the foothills looking up at the peak of a mountainous breakthrough journey, people will think you are crazy, and they will go to great lengths to talk you out of it, overtly or covertly. And standing at the top of the mountain looking back down at how the path of the breakthrough journey unfolded, there will be some Monday morning quarterbacks saying, “Yeah, I always knew we should be here and what took so long?” You can’t win. Be OK with that. The people who know the heavy lifting and load carrying support that it took, will give you a little nod, a wink, a wry smile. That’s enough to keep at it. It’s part of the job. It’s in me. I love it.  My 3 words are Agile Breakthrough Leadership which is my passionate purpose.


My Journey

I am blessed that my journey has brought me to an intersection which can be uniquely valuable for my audiences and clients

  • Real World Agility Experiences … on onshore and offshore oil & gas drilling rigs.
  • Business World Agility Experiences … as a manager, executive, CEO and Divisional CEO.
  • Advisory World Agility Experiences … as a consultant, coach, mentor, CEO peer group chair and speaker, board member and chair, author and keynote speaker.

These experiences enable me to be an thought leading interpreter, translator and facilitator of enterprise agility with provocative agile mindsets, profound agile skill-sets and practical agile tool-sets, specializing in the agility challenges of CEOs and Executives running small to medium sized enterprises.  I love revealing the myths, mysteries and magic of agility in ways that everyday people can relate to.


My Clarity in 3X5s

As a result, I have never been clearer that the core challenge comes down to:

  • 5 attributes of agility to change our relationship with ... Chaos, Triage, Insight, Luck and Journey Orientation.   Each of these attributes is the subject of ground breaking research in its own right.  In combination, as either a self-defeating vicious cycle or a self-fulfilling virtuous cycle, they explain the unbroken code between the fragile majority and the agile minority, in particular for small to medium sized enterprises.    These 5 attributes evolve into the 5 new roles for everyday agile leaders.
  • The  5 roles for everyday agile leaders ... Chief Chaos Coach, Chief Triage Facilitator, Chief Insight Trainer, Chief Luck Consultant and Chief Journey Architect.  If you don't step up to these roles, you risk that no one else will.  Like it or lump it, you are the Chief Agility Officer of your business, in particular for small to medium sized enterprises.   
  • The 5 action steps to an agility operating system which is a journey to institutionalize.


The Bottom-Line is Agile C2C:  Conversation-Flow to Cash-Flow

The bottom-line is the transaction-flow of conversation to cash, which we call Agile C2C:  Conversation-Flow to Cash-Flow.  Its what drives your share price (whether you have one or not), because where your conversation-flow goes your cash-flow follows.  Agile or fragile?  An agility operating system can change the trajectory of everything.


I am an American citizen now and live with my wife Rhona in the beautiful southern California wine country in Temecula,  CA, USA.

Question: what drives the bottom line journey of your share Price (whether you have one or not)?

Answer: agile c2C (conversation-flow to cash-flow)

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