Backstory
I’ve been an independent advisor in business since 1985, when I graduated from The Wharton School with an MBA in Organization Design. For 13 years I was content to subcontract my services (essentially the design/development/delivery of management education relating to creative problem-solving and innovation) to larger management consulting and performance improvement firms. Everything changed in 1998.
That’s when through a bit of serendipity I was introduced to a company called Toyota. They asked me to facilitate a 3-day strategy session for a new business unit, something called The University of Toyota. That initial assignment became an 8-year, full-time consulting gig.
For those 8 years my entire professional life revolved around Toyota, helping them launch and build their corporate management education strategy. Over the years I progressed much as they did in the days of the Renaissance: novice, apprentice, journeyman, master.
My final two years with Toyota were spent teaching their methods to outside organizations, which gave me invaluable practical insight into how to embed and grow to maturity a culture rich with continuous innovation in virtually any environment.
8 is a lucky number in Japan, and I sure feel lucky for having those 8 years to my name. I learned the art and discipline of solving problems more scientifically. I learned how to “think lean” by focusing on the customer and removing anything impeding the flow of value to them. I learned how think like a designer by immersing myself in the world of the customer before ever attempting to create a solution. I learned how to learn; more accurately, learn again…the natural way we did as insatiably curious and playful children. I learned how to create cultures and environments that foster that ethos of experimentation and continuous innovation.
Those 8 years opened my mind to the power of subtraction, and to the art and science of achieving the maximum effect through the minimum means, aka shibumi, a Japanese term and Zen ideal loosely translated to mean “understated elegance.”
Where I’m At Now
I now have the best job in the world. I act as part corporate muse, part creativity coach, part innovation catalyst, helping people solve the problems that are most important to them, facilitating, coaching and guiding creative teams and individuals all over the planet as they track down elegant solutions to complex problems. Then I get to speak about it on the lecture circuit, teach it workshops and seminars, and write about it in my weekly columns for the American Express OPEN Forum Idea Hub, here on my blog, in magazines like The Rotman Magazine, Design Mind, MIT/Sloan Management Review, and in my three books, which you can learn more about on my Books page.
Latest Projects
I just completed work on my fourth book, The Laws of Subtraction, which will be published October 26, 2012 by McGraw-Hill.
I run a small creativity coaching agency called Edit Innovation (formerly Shibumi Creative Works) that delivers my workshops and coaching.
Frequently Given Answers (FGAs)
Here are my Top Ten most frequently given answers, tidbits and trivia otherwise known as FGAs.
- My worldview, borrowed from The Who, is: “The Simple Things You See Are All Complicated.” Which means you have to change the way you think about the world.
- My best advice, borrowed from Jim Collins, is: “Stop Doing.” Everyone’s got a To-Do List. How many have a To-Don’t List?
- My go-to strategy: subtraction. It’s how you add wealth from (and through) simplicity.
- The best way to engage me is by asking questions. Ones that make me think.
- I’m drawn to subtractive design, lean thinking, and everyday ingenuity, the simpler and more powerful — that is, the more elegant — the better.
- Even though I’m a writer, I greatly admire and appreciate visual approaches. I envy them, mostly because I suck at them.
- I spent eight years working with and for Toyota’s U.S. headquarters, during which time I became a decent kaizen (continuous improvement and innovation) instructor and coach. I can help you decipher their lean mystique and make it work in your company.
- I don’t have any scholarly conceptual models. I’m a practitioner, and prefer to focus on things I’ve seen work in the real world. Or that I believe will work in the future world, based on today’s real-world problems.
- Don’t ask me to parse Design Thinking, Lean Thinking, Systems Thinking, Six Sigma, Agile, Kaizen, Innovation, TRIZ, TQM, Reengineering, etc. They are all just different denominations in the church of the customer…innovation disciplines and ways to solve the same basic problem: adding value.
- Little known fact: I’m a published songwriter, with a coupla dozen songs to my name. I love the creative constraint of three minutes and eight basic notes with which to craft a universally resonant message. My strength: lyrics.
- Somewhat known fact: I won the New Yorker Magazine cartoon caption contest on March 17, 2008 (after three attempts) for a panel drawn by cartoonist Jack Ziegler. The full-sized, signed panel hangs proudly in my den.
Connections:
I am active in social media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and my “handle” for each of those is the same (I love symmetry): MatthewEMay . Don’t forget the middle ‘E’.
I recently added Google+ and Pinterest to the repertoire as well, and am just beginning to explore things there.
I respond as quickly as I can in those media, but the quickest and best way to reach me directly is through good-old fashioned email:
MatthewdotEdwarddotMayatgmaildotcom
To speak by phone regarding workshops, facilitation, or coaching, my direct line is +1 (805) 230-2908.
