About Me
I was born and grew up in Fort Madison, Iowa.
I joined the Navy right after graduating from high school and I spent 20
years there, retiring as a decorated Chief Petty Officer. While in
the Navy I was trained as a technician, an instructor, a programmed
instruction writer, an instructional systems
developer and an internal organization development (OD) consultant.
After retiring from the Navy, I
took up a career as a consultant, then as an executive and now as a
researcher and writer.
I am curious, smart, quick, creative, knowledgeable, hard-working,
willing to step up, and a risk-taker. I am also more than a little lucky. These qualities account for
any success I enjoyed in the Navy and in my subsequent civilian career.
Early in my civilian career, I established a reputation as "a
bacon-saver," a guy who could dig his client out of a hole (or keep him
from falling into one). That happened because I was willing to
take on assignments no one else wanted. The projects were seen as
high-risk, and as having lots of downside and not much upside. The
pros steered clear. But, as
a newcomer, and a guy with no college degree, I didn't have much to
lose. Besides, in some of those situations, if you did succeed,
the payoffs were pretty good. I usually managed to succeed. To
do that, I had to innovate, I had to come up with some new approach
or tool or way of viewing the situation to make it manageable.
And, although I can work as hard as anyone, I'm always looking for
easier, smarter ways of doing things. Consequently, in many cases,
I had to write my own playbook instead of playing by someone else's.
A CEO who hired me to head up systems and
operations at his company once told me, "You come more quickly to the
heart of a matter than anyone I've ever known." That ability no
doubt accounts for much of my success. An EVP who hired me to join
his company said, "You have a most unusual knack for getting the 'little
people' to go along with the program." That, too, has contributed
to my success.
One more thing: I was fortunate enough to have clients who
were anxious to find someone, anyone, who could help them with what they
were up against.
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About My Work
I consider myself to be an organizational
generalist. My career includes work as a technician, an
internal consultant, an external consultant, an
executive and a writer, all of which are forms of knowledge work.
I've worked in several different industries and most major organizational
functions. For more information see my
Project History.
Along the way I encountered many difficult, novel and vexing
situations and, in the course of successfully dealing with them, I had to
devise various tools, strategies and tactics. In a very real sense, I
became a toolmaker.
Indeed,
there is an award-winning section on my web site titled “Knowledge Workers Tool Room.” It
contains dozens of tools useful to and usable by knowledge workers.
The tools I created repeatedly proved
their utility and their value – to me, my clients and my employers. Accordingly,
one of my current aims is to share some of the more useful and
valuable of these tools.
The
four that are center-stage right now are The Target Model, The Goals
Grid, The Achievement Path and The Solution Engineering Process.
All four are proven tools and all four stem from my own career as a
knowledge worker.
All throughout my career, clients have asked me to "look into things."
One wanted to know about knowledge management. Another wanted to
know about the current "hot" issues in distribution. A third
wanted to know why one of her best salespeople was calling in sick when
he was in the middle of good run of sales. A fourth wanted to know
what a "common systems architecture" would look like for what were then
separate and disparate programs. In all cases, I delivered.
In a very real sense, I am an investigator.
Currently, my work consists mainly of "looking into
things" for my clients, writing and
publishing. I am available for consulting, coaching and
making presentations regarding the topics featured on this website.
As always, I am happy to be of "Assistance at A Distance."
If you're a senior manager, an executive, or a CEO, you might want to read an open
letter to CEOs about a couple of "Big Wins"
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