My Passion
Building things. Learning out loud.
The best systems thinkers stay close to the work. I thrive there — in the trenches, whether with leadership at the strategy level or functional operators making it work. It's about teaming with like-minded change agents to continuously improve. That means making it flow better. This is where I share what I'm learning, what I'm building, what's next, and the books and people that shaped how I think. My goal in sharing my experiences is to inspire greater collaboration in continuous improvement — a social workshop with the door open.
Kx
·Knowledge Share
What I'm sharing freely
Ideas, principles, and patterns I've developed over a career in systems thinking. These are personal perspectives on how work flows through complex organizations — shaped by decades of learning, not tied to any single employer or engagement. Take what's useful, adapt it to your context.
Articles & Points of View
Long-form thinking on systems engineering, flow, regulated development, and the intersection of AI with product development.
ArchiMate Model Library
Reference architecture models expressing how flow-based regulated product development should work. Contextual views shared here, detailed models explored in the writing.
Coming soonCurated Resources
Books, tools, people, and ideas I recommend — with honest context about why. Not affiliate link spam. Actual guidance from someone who's used these things in practice.
Coming soonInfluences
The books that built my thinking
Several of these are signed by their authors — not as collectibles, but because I was lucky enough to learn from them directly. Each one represents a thread in how I think about systems, flow, and organizations.
Toyota Production System
Taiichi Ohno
The origin of Lean — eliminating waste, flow, and pull
Out of the Crisis
W. Edwards Deming
Statistical thinking & system of profound knowledge
Worked with Deming at Ford in the 1990s
My precious signed copyThe Fifth Discipline
Peter Senge
Learning organizations & systems dynamics
Learned from Senge's circle including Chris Magee at Ford
Essential Scrum
Kenneth S. Rubin
Scrum done right — practical, grounded, no dogma
Learned Scrum directly from Ken Rubin
Getting Things Done
David Allen
Personal productivity & workflow clarity
Turn the Ship Around!
L. David Marquet
Intent-based leadership & distributed authority
Actionable Agile Metrics
Daniel Vacanti
Flow metrics & probabilistic forecasting
The Toyota Way
Jeffrey Liker
Lean product development systems
Toyota Kata
Mike Rother
Improvement kata & coaching kata
Crossing the Chasm
Geoffrey A. Moore
Technology adoption & market dynamics
Full bookshelf with lineage notes coming soon.
Some links may be affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend books that genuinely shaped my thinking.
In My Workshop
What I'm building with my hands
Drone Meets EV Skateboard
A miniature-scale working prototype of a multimodal transportation system. The concept: you request a ride from your app. A robocar picks you up and drives you to a heliport. The passenger cabin decouples from the road skateboard, couples to a drone-type vertical lift unit, and flies you over the congested city or river. At the hoverport on the other side, the cabin drops onto a waiting road skateboard which whisks you to your final destination.
Three vehicle platforms. Two mode transitions. One seamless passenger experience. Every integration point is a systems engineering problem — mechanical coupling, power handoff, navigation continuity, passenger safety across transitions. It’s the software-defined vehicle concept taken to its logical multimodal conclusion, built at a scale where I can actually test it in my workshop.
Along the way, learning the robotic programming languages and what it really takes to get to full autonomy levels — and how much AI can speed up the process.
More details and build photos coming as the project progresses.
Aston Martin Electronics Modernization
Some projects are about proving a methodology works at enterprise scale. This one is about proving I still know which end of a soldering iron to hold.
Modernizing the electronics in a classic Aston Martin — integrating Apple CarPlay, adding a reversing camera, and upgrading the infotainment system while preserving the character of the car. It’s a technology blueprinting exercise in miniature: understanding the existing architecture, identifying integration points, selecting components that work together, and managing the constraints of a platform that was never designed for this.
More details and build photos coming as the project progresses.
Practicing What I Preach
Building tools to improve my own flow
I'm building personal productivity tools, planning aids, automators, and task accelerators — applying the same flow-based thinking I write and speak about. Some are further along than others.
Planning
Flow-based planning and Monte Carlo forecasting for delivery management.
Assessment
AI-augmented diagnostics to measure current state against reference models.
Measurement
Flow metrics and probabilistic forecasting to replace gut-feel estimation.
Automation
Task accelerators and workflow automators to reduce overhead and toil.