I live quietly with my wife, a magazine editor and published children’s book author (currently sitting at five books). We have two cats: Veronica (named after the Elvis Costello song) and Chairman Meow (because it’s a clever name). I’m a voracious reader, and a fan of film and good TV—The Wire, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad, to name a few. Just the good stuff. I also play a lot of Xbox. (I’m currently trying to curb my Xbox addiction.) I’m a fantastic cook; that’s what my wife tells me, anyway, and I choose to believe her. The thing I enjoy the most is cooking dinner for friends, having a group over on a Saturday night, and laughing and eating into the small hours of the morning. I love to travel and spent a year recently living and working in Indonesia.
I’m easy to get along with and quickly form friendships in the workplace. As a matter of fact, most of my current friends were workmates at one point. On the Myers-Briggs test, I consistently score high enough to be considered an extreme extrovert. According to introverts I know, I’m easy to spend time with, as I do the bulk of the talking but also listen well. I have lots of stories to tell. So, I’m pretty outgoing and energized by being around people. I’m also very funny. It’s true. Let me tell you a joke:
Rob Ford’s reality show was canceled after just one episode. That’s the difference between Americans and Canadians. If you’re spiraling out of control in America, your reality show will be renewed for another season. But Canadians just don’t want to watch Canadian content.
I’ve also been told I do an awesome Christopher Walken impression, even when I don’t mean to. It’s so easy to slip into Chris-speak.
I’m big on communication. Why send an email when you can pick up the phone and talk to someone? Why call when you can walk across the room and talk to someone face to face? I feel communication is the answer to most of the problems that exist in the workplace.
I’ve worked with nerds of every denomination, from programmer nerds (graphics, AI, database, rendering, front-end) to art nerds (UX, concept, video, 3D, VFX, painters) to QA nerds to business nerds to marketing nerds to the always-dangerous legal nerds. In fact, I am the Nerd Whisperer, although some days I have to be the Nerd Herder. I also have a lot of experience dealing with clients—or, as I like to call it, hostage negotiation. I’ve never lost a hostage on my watch.
I’ve managed teams of all sizes, from as small as two people sitting in one room, to as large as 150 people at four companies on three continents. In Indonesia, I was responsible for a studio of 250 people, including IT, art, developers, database managers, and a 100-person QA department, working on seven projects simultaneously.
Darth Vader gave very specific instructions and followed up on tasks he assigned to underlings. Captain Kirk, on the other hand, was brash, didn’t push out information to his crew, never delegated, and often made hasty, poorly thought-out decisions. Being a solid leader and creating other leaders are passions of mine. I’ve spent much of my career building leaders, teaching them how to be, know, and do the things necessary to become strong leaders, and I’m currently writing a book on the subject. I strive to be more of an Obi-Wan than a Mr. Burns.
Challenge and crisis are my forte: as a former forest-fire fighter and, later, member of a Coast Guard search-and-rescue team, I’ve been in real-world crises, situations where panic would have been fatal. I understand the importance of a sense of urgency when it is appropriate, but never panic.
“Improvise, adapt, modify, and overcome.” This saying became my mantra while working in Indonesia. It was impossible to predict what was coming, in a country where the Internet and electricity went down almost daily, where regular monsoon rains were an acceptable excuse for missing work, where work stopped several times each day so staff could pray in the meeting/prayer rooms, and where an important meeting could be cancelled due to a goat stampede.
Change is inevitable. Change will always mess up your carefully laid plans. That’s why maximum flexibility is a necessity in today’s world. That’s why I create plans that are more like recipes than blueprints. A blueprint is fixed and unchangeable. A recipe is flexible and organic. It allows for mitigation and contingency. You still have to be cognizant of the baking times—those are solid deadlines that, if not met, can result in a burnt cake, errr, project, errr, you know what I mean.