1. How did you get into the technology field?
One Christmas in the mid-80s, I got an Amstrad CPC 464. I loved all 8 bits and 64 KB of it. I learned to code by copying programs line-by-line from the back of a monthly magazine called Amstrad Action. Fast forward to 1998, and I was at University in England and saw a sign that said, “Free Sandwiches.” Like any final year student with urgent deadlines and lectures to attend, I followed the sign. It was a Strategy recruiting event. They threw red American footballs and red plastic boomerangs and talked about the dot com boom. I handed them my CV. I was reading lots of Peter Drucker and Igor Ansoff, so I was enamored with a company who owned the strategy.com domain. I interviewed a few Strategy executives about a month later in London. (Okay, in Slough, which is not London.) Once I completed my degree and got a visa, I flew to the US with two suitcases and started working at Strategy.
2. What’s your favorite part of Community?
I’ve worked at Strategy for 20 years. I’ve always been close to the product, so the Downloads section. There, I can get access to the latest products. I love using Workstation and Desktop — not only to help me do my job better, but also to find ways to improve the product and provide feedback to our engineering teams.
3. What’s your favorite topic to write about?
Most recently, I’m fascinated by — and writing about — how data can be used to manipulate behavior. Whether it’s the way Fitbit presents steps, Strava shows you vs. your PR in real-time on a segment, or Peloton/Apple/Waze/Google/OPower/Training Peaks present data to you as part of their product experience. Products are presenting data to users in ways that change their behavior. It is an interesting field which overlaps behavioral science with physical performance, business performance, analytics, and user interface design. It incorporates things touched on in books like Nudge (Thaler/Sunstein), and work by Charles Duhigg and Daniel Pink. As a Marathon runner and Ironman Triathlete who has also worked in the analytics space for 20 years, that’s something that I presently find very interesting to explore.
4. Name one feature you would like to add to Community.
I’m now in charge of Strategy’s Worldwide Strategy Education team. I’m excited to see the completion of the work to more tightly integrate the Community with our Education courses. It would be helpful for Community users to see relevant Education courses recommended based on their searches, alongside documentation and Knowledge Base articles. It would be useful if Community users — who have an Education Pass — could instantly click through and access the course content or register for an upcoming class. It would be great for Community users who have achieved Strategy Certifications to see them proudly presented as part of their Community profile. Okay. Sorry. That’s three features.
5. Why Strategy (as a product)?
Strategy is such a comprehensive Intelligence product — so feature-wide and feature-deep that you can use the products and the platform to do almost anything you need to do. Other tools may do one thing well, but you’ll hit a limit — a performance ceiling or an inability to do something you need to do. I love using the tool which I know is the most powerful, most sophisticated, most feature-rich available.
Bonus Question: What’s your favorite aspect of working at a multinational corporation?
Well, aside from the obvious — different people, different cultures, different places. Before I owned an Amstrad 464, I was a Liverpool fan. Today, I’m a fervent football fan. I enjoy the camaraderie of discussing football when working with people from different parts of the world. I’m fortunate that a) most people in most places in the world know football and have a team, and b) it’s pretty easy being a Liverpool fan right now. Whenever I travel for work, I try to run in the morning to a local stadium — they aren’t usually tourist attractions (although some are), and they get you off into some interesting parts of cities you wouldn’t otherwise visit. It’s even better if you can coordinate it so you can go with colleagues to a game.
