who I am

Matthew E. May

My simple aspiration is to help business professionals raise their game and create meaningful change. I do that through training, coaching, facilitation, writing and speaking on three key leadership development themes: strategy, innovation, and operations.

I teach master classes in these areas using the most powerful high performance frameworks in business today. My work is heavily influenced by spending 8 years with Toyota, which culminated in my first book, The Elegant Solution. I’ve now published a total of five books, the latest being Winning the Brain Game, which I wrote to help leaders win by changing how they think.

I’m a partner in the strategy firm Stratechia, a contributing writer for several publications and sites, a New Yorker cartoon caption contest winner, an avid cyclist, and struggling tennis player.

I get the greatest joy from helping ambitious professionals win.

WHO I HELP

master classes

master classes are high-energy, hands-on, tools-based and perfect for time-crunched professionals wishing to upskill themselves and their teams in the most relevant business disciplines

PLAYING
TO WIN

Strategy Development Framework

DESIGN
THINKING

Customer-Centered Innovation

LEAN
THINKING

Toyota Production System + Kaizen

JOURNEY MAPPING

Customer Experience Development

BUSINESS BIG THREE

Strategy + Design + Lean

WINNING THE BRAIN GAME

Advanced Creative Technique

PRAISE

“Matt, I want to convey the important impact you clearly had on our team and emphasize how much we value learning at AppNexus. I look forward to celebrating both quick wins and complete rethinks your session today ultimately triggers.”
PABLO DOMINGUEZ
VP, AppNexus

“Matt, our sessions with you gave us the forethought and foresight that enabled us to not only weather the recent real estate crash, but positioned us to launch a new brand for an entirely new home purchaser and emerge as market leader.”
KEN KRIVANEC
President, Quadrant Homes

“Matt, thank you for the guidance you have provided the Senior System Leadership Team. You add depth to our thinking on how we are developing people to improve unique processes to create superior value and win in the marketplace.”
JEFFREY HUNTER
EVP, Thedacare

books

Winning the Brain Game

FIXING THE 7 FATAL FLAWS OF THINKING

“This book should be a must-read for any innovator, business leader or problem solver.”
BRAD SMITH, Executive Chairman , Intuit

This book is the culmination of giving a real-world thought challenge to thousands of people over ten years, and reveals seven observable problem-solving patterns that can block our best thinking. Calling on modern science to help explain things, along with insights from the world’s best thinkers, it offers a super-curated, field-tested set of “fixes” proven to raise your thinking game.

Speaking

I tailor every talk, but these are some of the most popular themes

MIND OF THE INNOVATOR

The pressure to stand out and stay relevant in a fiercely competitive marketplace demands innovative thinking to jump the curve and move to the next level. The tension between business objectives and creative thinking isn’t easily resolved…unless you can tame the traps of traditional thinking. In this talk, I take the audience inside the minds of the world’s most creative executives and entrepreneurs to reveal how they crush the status quo, write their own rules, and move the world.

ELEGANT SOLUTIONS

Our businesses are more complicated and difficult to manage than ever. There is endless choice and feature overkill in all but the best experiences. Enter the need for elegant solutions: products, services, and strategies that achieve the maximum effect with minimum means. In this talk, I reveal the key to innovative breakthroughs in a wide range of domains, and shed light on the power of simplicity and subtraction in business, work and life, while offering surprising evidence that the best ideas have something missing…on purpose.

THE ELEGANT LEADER

Amidst an arguably expanding world economy, one fact stands clear: business leaders are facing a scarcity of resources. Materials cost increases and other financial burdens combined with an ever-shrinking pool of top talent leaves leaders facing a critical capability challenge. Enter the concept of elegance: achieving the maximum effect with minimum means. In this talk, I reveal how the best leaders spur creativity and innovation among their ranks by imposing intelligent constraints.

WINNING THE BRAIN GAME

When we’re faced with a difficult or unfamiliar challenge, our best thinking and problem-solving becomes vulnerable to brain patterns that lead us astray. In this highly interactive keynote, I give audiences the same simple thought challenge I've given to over 100,000 people to reveal those thinking flaws. Then, calling on science and insight from the world’s most innovative thinkers, participants leave with a powerful set of “fixes,” proven through hundreds of creative sessions to raise your mental game.

INNOVATION THE TOYOTA WAY

Creating a culture of continuous innovation is no longer a nicety, it's a necessary. No better example exists than Toyota, a global giant that implements 1 million ideas a year. Driving the Toyota approach is a companywide quest for elegant solutions. Based on my book The Elegant Solution, and success in applying the collective wisdom gleaned from nearly a decade of working with Toyota, Lexus, and Scion to other organizations, I deliver a vital prescription of ten key cultural practices that are a must-have for organizations pursuing continuous innovation.