Hi, I'm Brian
I help teams realize their full potential.
Developing teams • Empowering people • Reinventing work
Brian at Marina Beach Park, Edmonds, Washington, 2019
Everyone should be excited to get to work in the morning, pour their hearts into that work all day, and go home feeling deeply satisfied that they invested themselves in something worth doing.
We spend half of our waking hours every weekday at work. It should be a positive experience.
My mission is to help teams and their leaders to make work better.
If your team isn't fully engaged in its work,
If you wish they would collaborate and work together better,
Brian can guide you and your team to make work better.
Developing Teams
After years as a systems engineer and team leader at Google, in 2016, I started coaching and facilitating teams, first as a certified Holacracy facilitator and un-certified coach, then later as an internal consultant in g2g TeamDev Consulting (Google's team development program for directors and team leaders). I helped teams:
Create psychological safety
Gain clarity and structure
Articulate their values and purpose
Develop their mission and strategy
Get work done with energy and focus
I left Google at the end of 2020 after 14 years there and am now bringing what I've learned to the rest of the world through coaching, for both teams and their leaders, and public workshops.
Empowering People
Every year, a Gallup report tells us that the vast majority of workers aren’t engaged in their work. They’re doing the bare minimum to get through their day and collect a paycheck at the end of the week. They’re ready to jump ship at the first opportunity.
They don’t have a healthy relationship with work where they spend half of their waking hours every weekday.
That’s a drab existence.
Everyone should have a sense of meaning and purpose in their work, a voice in what they do and how they do it. Everyone should have hope for a vibrant future.
I help people find that hope, that purpose, that sense of meaning. I illuminate a path so my clients can find or create the tools that they need to take control of their destiny, to command their future.
Reinventing Work
Ever since my team at Google experimented with self-management practices in 2016, I’ve been developing ways to implement those practices for other teams, both inside Google and outside.
In my experience, Google is like many other high-functioning organizations. They want to engage their people, equip them to do their best work, and get out of the way. That means helping team members find their strengths, cultivate a work environment that grows those strengths to their fullest potential, and pointing the team toward a vision of the future.
I coach teams and their leaders to create that environment, to articulate that vision, to build that future. I consult with organizations to build structures and processes for the teams of the 21st century.
Whether it’s customizing Holacracy or some other self-management framework, developing a suite of team decision-making processes, or distilling shared values into a mission statement and strategic plan, I help teams and leaders reinvent their work to engage the team and fulfill their destiny.
Let’s Explore What’s Possible
Let’s explore your vision, your mission, your future. Let’s map out a path to engage and empower your team.
Brian has worked with these organizations
Google
US Forest Service
US Navy
PG&E
University of Washington
Oracle
IBM
HolacracyOne
About that Pirate Pic
On LinkedIn and Facebook, you'll see that my profile pic is that of me dressed as a pirate. That was just for fun---at first.
Let me explain.
Sure, pirates were rogues, rebels, and rapscallions.
They got fed up being mistreated by the aristocracy, took control of their lives, and organized themselves.
They shared risks and rewards, and (often, though not always) elected their own leaders.
They freed slaves as opportunities arose, often inviting them to join their crews.
They even formed a simple workman's compensation insurance program, paying a bonus for limbs or eyes lost in battle.
Brian at the Google Seattle office, Halloween, 2011
The pirates of the golden age (about 1690-1726) were the forebears of American democracy, rebelling against the aristocracy of Great Britain and Western Europe.
(I wonder if Alexander Hamilton, who grew up on Caribbean islands shortly after the Golden Age of Pirates, found inspiration in those sea stories while he fought in the American Revolution as George Washington's aide-de-camp.)
In today's VUCA world, we need to cast off archaic ways of doing business, rally around shared values, leverage our strengths, and navigate into unexplored waters and stormy seas. We need to form teams not unlike the Brethren of the Coast, but with more structure and clarity of purpose.
That's what I help teams do.