About

You can find my trail and tracks all over the web. This site is about me. It’s a mix of words and work. It’s not designed to sell anything in particular other than my ideas. If you find something interesting . . . well then the site worked.

At different times over the past thirty years I have been a consultant, author, speaker, executive, and entrepreneur. What I do best is help people solve difficult, obtuse, highly charged problems; the kind that have big financial, organizational, competitive, regulatory, and/or social impact. I help people come to decision as quickly and elegantly as possible consistent with working the problem in a high quality way. That’s what I do.

What I am is another question completely: Storyteller, unrepentant ranter, mostly an optimist, passionate believer in the power of being the best version of yourself every minute, and sometimes agent provocateur are terms I hope people use when they think of me.

It’s fair to say that I have an attitude about things, and certainly a style in how I think, write, and speak. Don’t mistake the sometimes familiar, breezy tone for a lack of earnestness about the work of meaning and the meaning of work. I am serious about my business and have serious thoughts about business. In fact, I think the work we do, whatever it is, can and should be ennobling. It should bring out the best in us, not the worst.

Over the past three decades, I’ve worked closely with executives at a hundred or so organizations both big and small.

Some of them–like CapitalOne, Lloyds/TSB, EDS, Russell Investments, Union Bank, Teletech, Wells Fargo, FleetBank, Microsoft, Bank of America, Regions Bank, Sony, Colgate, Young & Rubicam, Sears, CIBC, Arthur Andersen (long, long before Enron), Ernst & Young, KPMG, United Utilities, and Colonial First State (Aus)–you’ve probably heard of. Many others you probably haven’t. None of them ever asked for their money back, and most would even tell you that the work I did made a difference.

Sometimes even a big difference.

During that time I’ve written and conducted sales, service, marketing, customer experience, coaching, and leadership training programs, workshops, and seminars that thousands of people have been through. I have worked as a lone wolf, worked in partnership with others, started some companies, and worked for companies that others started. I also briefly worked for an Internet incubator during the dot.com craziness, thus heeding the siren call of instant riches that gathered in so many others. I’m not proud of that one, but it was a fascinating experience.

Long ago I helped found a wonderful company called Lion Coffee in Honolulu Hawaii. This was back before coffee was king and when Starbucks could only see as far as the Puget Sound. As a measure of my then youthful impetuosity, I left long before Lion became the success it became, so in all honesty, I get a founder credit, but Jim Delano, the guy who really started and funded the company, was the real star.

I write, I speak, I pepper an unsuspecting world with my ideas, and generally do what I can to make work coincide with the great intentions and aspirations most of us carry with us when we’re not trying to earn a living.

kah