In addition to my work as the Chief Emergence Officer of the Holon Institute, I work with select executives and teams to deconstruct stagnating complexity and design the future during times of transformation.
I am a researcher, strategist, speaker, designer, and globally recognized thought leader. I have partnered with public and private sector executives on four continents to make sense of stagnating complexity during times of transformation. I’ve been invited to have dinner with the president of Burundi in East Africa, I was hired to teach Bill Gates about EVTOLs (flying cars), I advised the government of Singapore on how to educate a innovative generation of leaders, and I was senior innovation advisor to the Mayor of Seattle. My ability to absorb and illuminate novel ideas has led me to unexpected places around the world, I hope it leads me to you.
52% of the S&P 500 have gone extinct over the last fifteen years. Yesterday’s solutions do not solve today’s problems. The task of any organization – to create value – is becoming exponentially more complex and difficult. It is imperative organizations learn at the pace of change. Innovation and differentiation depend on real time insights that empower you to anticipate your customer’s needs. Collecting, understanding, and applying insight in real time is the only sustainable competitive advantage in a world that is constantly evolving.
I partner with visionary leaders who are willing to look inward as they are to look outward. My creative and collaborative approach, grounded in research, enables impactful transformation of organizations, cultures, and environments, driving business performance. I typically partner with visionary leaders to work through the following:
01 CHANGE
In our digital era, change is the normative experience of life and work. Certainty from quarter to quarter is a thing of the past. Those with conviction will define the future.
The dissonance and disorientation of rapid transformation can be overcome with human centered leadership practices, embodied decision making from a place of conviction, and story driven communication that makes meaningful sense of the world. By understanding the nature and sequence of change, our clients overcome complexity and stay ahead of the competition.
02 LEARNING
According to the Microsoft work trends report, 76% of employees say they’d stay at their company longer if they could benefit more from learning and development support.
New, urgent business questions seem to emerge each month. Whether it’s understanding the implications of AI, robotics, hybrid work, NFTs, or wellness, these pressing questions often take time to unravel. Yet your organization’s readiness and resilience is tied to how quickly you can upskill and inform your workforce. I provide engaging learning experiences tailored to your needs so you can stay make critical decisions at the pace of change.
03 RESEARCH
Inquiry and discovery are imperative components of any innovation endeavor. Minimize disruption and maximize impact through acute understanding of your industry.
Navigating new territory is made much easier when you have a map of the terrain. Research is rationalized learning, utilizing rigorous methodologies and practices to probe the unknown. From understanding the needs of a customer to identifying opportunities in emerging markets, research is the means to advantageous and actionable intelligence. In generative research, this intelligence is often a question that has previously gone unasked. A more beautiful question begets a more beautiful answer – something our world needs more than ever before.
04 CULTURE
A strong culture increases net income by 765% over 10 years according to a Harvard study of more than 200 companies.
Throughout history, the primary objective of corporations was to maximize value for shareholders; driven by this imperative, leaders shaped their organizations to optimize output, leveraging employees as a means to an end. However, the purpose of a corporation has changed: leaders are now committed to providing value to all stakeholders, which includes employees. This paradigm shift amplifies the need for people-focused strategies and for understanding the implications of being humans at work. Innate human potential is expansive, yet it’s a largely untapped resource within organizations. The conduit to this resource is a positive work culture, which enables people to flourish and do their best work.
05 INNOVATION
Innovation is a paint brush for the medium of ideas. It is the ability to conceive, develop, deliver, and scale new products, services, processes, and business models for customers.
I partner with clients to foster innovation within their organization using different methods including idea incubation, capability building, culture activation, and designing transformative experiences. When an organization faces disruption, I can help reveal the conditions of the business, culture, and environment to design unexpected solutions with real impact.
06 FORESIGHT
Imagination is the best tool for driving collective action. Futures work is not about prediction, it is about projecting confidently what could be within the context of what is. Organizations are facing extraordinary times.
Thriving organizations today are driven by imagination and informed by data—this is exactly what my futures service is about. When you partner with me, you partner with a consultant dedicated to envisioning and manifesting a just, equitable, and prosperous world. This is an opportunity to re-imagine the fundamentals of work, life, and play for individuals, organizations, cities, and society at large.
My Ontological Model for Research
In the pursuit of shared prosperity among human and non-human persons, I focus on four domains of inquiry — educational systems of learning, existential systems of meaning, economic systems of value, and ecological systems of emergence.
These four domains of inquiry comprise what I consider to be the primary building blocks of a prosperous society. Additionally, these building blocks are (intra)relational—they each shape and inform the others. Educational systems of knowledge shape and inform existential systems of meaning. Or said more simply, our knowledge of the world shapes our knowledge of ourselves (our identity, our purpose), and our knowledge of ourselves shapes our knowledge of the world—these categories of knowledge are inextricable, or what some may call 'intersectional.' Likewise, our economics is inextricable from our ecologies—our relationships to each other, to our institutions, and the world around us.
These four domains of inquiry help direct our dream thinking—the practice of encountering, exploring, understanding, and communicating stories of possibility. We call these stories Functional Fictions—the narrative scaffolding by which our hopes, dreams, and aspirations are built and shared with others. The stories that catalyze a faith in the possibility of the impossible; a new way of being, together.
