I learned strategy the way most leaders never do. Not from a planning template. From wargaming and real-world military operations. As a Navy operations officer I built my foundation on thinking first, using it to anticipate, outmaneuver, and prepare for what conventional planning never sees coming.

That foundation has driven over forty years of work. It produced the TSWG Method, a structured repeatable process for strategic thinking that has worked everywhere from the National Strategy to Combat Identity Theft for the U.S. Department of Justice down to a single frustrated CEO whose bonus program was no longer moving the needle.

Take three minutes. Let me show you.

Forty years diagnosing what organizations and careers miss. From the engine room of an aircraft carrier and the deck of a Navy destroyer to the FBI Academy, Defense Intelligence Agency, IBM, Johns Hopkins, the World Bank Group, the City of San José, and ten years inside consulting firms.

Author of Throttle Up, a 2019 Wishing Shelf Awards finalist. Host of the Throttle Up Leadership Podcast. Creator of the Three-Frame Diagnostic and the TSWG Method. AIMP certified.

Throttle Up from the Field, Volume 1: Canaries in the Coal Mine is my 2026 field report. It draws from Gallup's 2025 State of the Global Workplace, DDI's 2025 Global Leadership Forecast, the Edelman Trust Barometer, and 18 practitioner interviews to diagnose the three structural failures driving the worker disengagement crisis.

Most leaders were handed strategic planning and told it was enough. I have spent forty years proving it is only half the equation. This session is where the other half begins.