Creative Problem Solver
From factory floors to first customers to fresh tracks. The problem changes. The way through doesn't.
For thirty years I have been handed messy, high-stakes problems and asked to find the way through. Different terrain every time, from human-factors work across dozens of industries to first-time business owners reaching their first paying customer. Same mind. Same act. An MBA in strategic innovation, an MSc in ergonomics and human factors, and Board Certified Professional Ergonomist certification (CPE, fewer than 1,000 worldwide) sit under the work as proof, not as the headline.
Right now the problem is a first paying customer. Zero to Paid is a six-week program for people who have always wanted to start a real, everyday business but have not made their first dollar and cannot afford to bet their savings to find out. A real paying customer is the only proof your idea is a business. This gets you your first one. A founding cohort starts August 29.
Writing
What I see in the field, what the research actually says, and what the mountain teaches you about performance under pressure. No hot takes. No tool roundups.
Read recent postsSpeaking
From ergonomics conferences to startup pitch stages to university lecture halls. On stages since the 1990s, talking about how humans interact with systems.
See topicsSkiing
The best performance laboratory I know. Pressure, terrain, real-time feedback, consequences. Thirty years on snow, a PSIC instructor and trainer, and a former chair of the CSIA board.
See the pursuitThinking out loud, in public. One mind looking at different problems, every couple of weeks, under D. Darren MacDonald.
May 22, 2026
I Found a Speech I Gave 30 Years Ago. I'm Still Giving It.
Thirty years ago I gave my student convocation address at Dalhousie. Reading it now, the instincts in it are ones I still recognize.
March 30, 2026
The Saturday Debrief: Volume 3
Field notes on a post that hit 53,000 impressions with no framework or credentials, and what that says about leading with recognition before research.
March 24, 2026
The Invisible Erosion
How AI is quietly replacing the judgment we can't afford to lose.
Start with the writing.
It is where a reader meets the mind. When something there fits a problem you are carrying, the door is open.