Inspiring the world with innovation!
Become a smarter, more creative, more capable leader through better business skills, better leadership skills, and better innovation.
I help leaders and learners be more and achieve more in work and life.
“Innovation is creativity with a job to do.” — John Emmerling
I was head coach for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s innovation team, and I have 25 years of Microsoft and changing the world under my belt.
To create a better future, we need to dream big again. Innovation is a skill and it’s one of the best skills you can learn for work and life.
You can think of innovation simply as the adoption of new ideas, but really it’s applied creativity. And creativity is one of our most powerful abilities and hallmarks for humankind.
Everybody has creative potential inside them, but the key is to unleash it in a way that makes you come alive.
About Me
Hi, I am J.D. Meier…
I am a high performance & innovation coach with a special focus on human potential and transformation.
My mission is to empower everyone to be more and achieve more by advancing the art and science of human potential.
I help leaders and achievers bring ideas to life and realize big dreams.
I am an Agile leader, author, coach, entrepreneur, futurist, innovator, productivity specialist, project leader, and strategist.
I’ve been a CEO whisperer, helping leaders with billion-dollar ideas and game changing innovation.
One of my specialties is building world-class frameworks to empower others to achieve greater, positive impact.
I inspire the world through leadership skills, innovation, and sustainability (and high performance, too).
I believe that everybody deserves a chance at a better life and that life is better with skill.
I empower people with stories, strategies, and skills so they can transform themselves and the world around them.
My Mission is to Advance Human Potential
My core mission in life is to improve the quality of life for as many people as I can, as long as I can.
And I believe that through stories, strategies, and skills I help people with a passion for more from work and life explore and expand their potential.
Human Potential on Fire!
At the core of all I do is human potential. A tag line and slogan I often use is:
Human Potential on Fire!
I believe in the power of humanity to create and shape a better world. But I also believe we need to unleash that potential and that we can realize that potential through innovation, high performance and entrepreneurship.
Long ago, Andrew Carnegie espoused the power of Creative Vision as one of the key skills that humanity can harness, and Albert Einstein said it best, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Well, let’s learn how to Dream Big again, go for some Moonshots, and become the greatest version of ourselves…. and put our imagination to some great use.
Living and Leading the Agile Way
I’m the best-selling author of Getting Results the Agile Way.
The Agile Way is really a way of adapting to your changing world. As I like to say in my talks, “Nature favors the flexible.”
You can think of the book as guide to personal productivity and realizing your potential all rolled into one.
It’s a whole person approach to strategic productivity and the tag line is: “Better energy, better results.”
My adventures in Agile include:
- Agile for software (leading high-performance teams the Agile way as an Agile Program Manager)
- Agile for life (I share what I learned in Getting Results the Agile Way)
- Agile for business (I spent the last several years as a coach, strategist, and director driving business transformation)
Adventures at Microsoft
I’ve learned a few lifetimes of lessons at Microsoft over 25 years.
At work, I’ve played the role of Director, Strategist, Architect, Program Manager, and Support Engineer.
Here is a little overview of how I live my mission in life and the kind of work I do…
LEADING INNOVATION
Currently, I am a senior business executive leading innovation with a special focus on sustainability.
In other words, I’m trying to help save the planet, while helping leaders create more sustainable businesses that are good for people and good for the planet.
I ENABLE THE GENIUS IN OTHERS
I’ve been a CEO Whisperer, High Performance coach, and best-selling author for productivity and time management.I’ve shipped software, led high performance teams, and shaped the future of platforms and technologies. I’ve been called the “the Program Manager of Blockbusters”, “the Abilities Program Manager”, and the “King of Dreams”.
My super skill is building world-class frameworks that change the game. And my approach is to create inclusive and diverse frameworks that enable the genius in others to swarm around big challenges, achieve audacious goals, and bring ideas to life.
FORMER HEAD COACH for SATYA NADELLA’s INNOVATION TEAM
One of my most interesting roles was head coach of Satya Nadella’s innovation team. My job was to speed up innovation and help everybody learn how to create better business because of technology.
A key part of my job was to tell stories to inspire and share success patterns for rapid results. As a result, I created the Book of Dreams framework at Microsoft, which has been a phenomenon around the world.
CREATED the BOOK of DREAMS FRAMEWORK at MICROSOFT
I created the Book of Dreams framework at Microsoft to help leaders reimagine the future and explore the art of the possible in a digital world.
Really, it’s a framework for accelerating innovation and digital transformation that helps everyone innovate better and drive business growth.
I’ve built Dream Teams and Books of Dreams for everything from the future of work, to the future of education, to the future of cities, to even the future of sports.
Beyond work, I am also a bio hacker, brain hacker, knowledge hacker, and youth hacker.
I study success patterns and share them with the world.
Digital Business Transformation
I operate at the intersection of business and technology to bring new ideas to life.
I was “head coach” of Satya Nadella’s Innovation team (Satya is the CEO of Microsoft.) My job was to accelerate digital transformation, while learning better ways to drive digital business design, disruptive innovation, business model innovation, and more.
My favorite question for any CEO is:
“What will your future customers pay you for?”
I am currently the Director of Digital Business Transformation, where I create the tools and frameworks to help business leaders create and capture value in the digital era through insights, scenarios, stories, and business transformation patterns.
Building Books of Dreams to Change the World
I created and lead the Book of Dreams program at Microsoft.
The big idea of the Book of Dreams is to help business leaders dream up their digital future and then create it using a simple framework for vision, value, and solutions that link strategy with execution in an Agile way.
The Book of Dreams is both a Digital Transformation Framework as well as a series of playbooks to help business leaders reimagine the future, create a roadmap to get there, and accelerate business value along the way.
I’ve had the privilege and pleasure of creating Books of Dreams with experts around the world for the following industries, technologies, and business personas:
- Airlines Book of Dreams
- Automotive Book of Dreams
- Banking Book of Dreams
- Blockchain Book of Dreams
- CFO Book of Dreams
- CIO Book of Dreams
- CISO Book of Dreams
- Citizen Services Book of Dreams
- CityNext Book of Dreams
- Consumer Electronics Book of Dreams
- Consumer Goods Book of Dreams
- Education Book of Dreams
- Healthcare Book of Dreams
- Insurance Book of Dreams
- Manufacturing Book of Dreams
- Media Book of Dreams
- Mining Book of Dreams
- Mixed Reality Book of Dreams
- Modern Book of Dreams
- Oil & Gas Book of Dreams
- Retail Book of Dreams
- Smart Spaces Book of Dreams
- Sports Book of Dreams
- Telco Book of Dreams
Exploring the Art of the Possible
One of the big ideas in the Book of Dreams is to really explore “the art of the possible.”
With all the digital innovation happening around the world, it’s time to reimagine the future and to envision some bold ambitions.
One of the best ways I’ve found to practice the art of the possible is simply to start using the phrase: ”Imagine if …”
For example, “Imagine if more students passed, and less students failed thanks to machine learning.”
As you walk through each day, just start imagining how things could be better and how new technology innovations might enhance the world around you.
Imagine is a muscle and you can build if you exercise it, and as Einstein put it, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”
Building Frameworks and Learning Platforms
I’ve built a lot of frameworks and learning platforms.
As one of my mentors put it, “If you frame and name the space, you own it.”
Creating frameworks is a way to empower people to collaborate and build expertise and accelerate learning.
I’ve developed a rapid research approach that works to quickly chunk down a complex domain into actionable principles, patterns, and practices.
It works whether the goal is to simply learn the domain or whether you want to win a competitive assessment or if you want to design award winning products.
While my patents are in security, performance, and application architecture, I’ve created frameworks and methodologies for everything from adoption frameworks to digital transformation to emotional intelligence and personal productivity.
Innovation is My Game (And I Enjoy Changing the Game)
I am known as an “ideas guy” and an innovator.
But I’m also known as a doer and a driver.
I’ve learned a great deal about innovation from the school of hard knocks. I’ve experimented my way through big challenges and learned how to create frameworks and models that help everybody play in the game.
I’ve had great mentors that taught me a lot about innovation. I learned a lot about innovation from Michael Michalo, a former Disney imagineer, who wrote the book, “Thinkertoys.”
I also learned a lot about how to think differently using techniques from Edward de Bono, famous for Six Thinking Hats, as well as by studying past innovators like Thomas Edison. Perhaps my favorite idea from Edison is setting an Idea Quota (which Michael Michalko writes about.)
I tend to work in startups at Microsoft. I think because I am a “change the business” kind of a guy. I can “run the business” too, but I’m a futurist and I always have a vision for the future.
One thing I do each year is create an comprehensive catalog of emerging trends and insights to help get the balcony view and set the stage for the year to come.
The Art of Agile Program Management
One of my favorite roles has been a program manager.
It’s the closest thing in my mind to an entrepreneur where you ship ideas from cradle to grave.
It’s a demanding job with a lot of different skills including creating a vision, inspiring a team, stakeholder management, creating budgets, mapping out the work, connecting with customers, analyzing the market opportunity, and driving adoption and change.
One of my greatest and most inspiring mentors would always ask at the start of any project:
”How will the world be different when you are done?”
Next he would ask:
”Who is the dream team you need to pull that off?”
And he would challenge me to go and attract the top talent around the world and build the dream team and lead an epic adventure.
Program Management taught me a lot about how to envision, design, build, and ship great things.
Sharing Patterns and Practices
I am known in some circles as “the patterns and practices guy.”
You can think of patterns simply as “problem and solution pairs in a context.”
Patterns are a great way to share and scale expertise. Patterns are also great for sharing strategies and for building a common vocabulary.
To put it another way, patterns can help ramp up people that are new, as well as accelerate experts and actually advance and push the envelope of any subject or domain.
I’m lucky to have learned from some of the best patterns authors in the world.
As a hobby, I study, share, and scale success patterns for mind, body, emotions, career, finance, relationships, and fun.
Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
I’m a big believer in standing on the shoulder of giants to go further in this lifetime.
I learn from all I can.
In particular, I draw from great books, great people, and great quotes.
In fact, I have a library of over 1,300 articles of profound insights and actions on personal empowerment that I share at Sources of Insight.
I think that well-organized quotes puts the wisdom of the ages and modern sages at your fingertips. Sometimes the right idea strikes like lightening because of just the right quote.
Running with the Titans
I’m a big fan of helping people “Stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Better yet, as a late friend told me, “I help people run with the Titans.”
Are you ready to run?