Maximillian
Kaizen
About
Hunter of Genius
For some of us old wizards, the longer you prowl about on this planet, the trickier it is to sum yourself up with a neat professional label. Living a curiosity-driven life has its costs. Notably in brevity.*
But its breadth is an asset if you're a creative technologist treasure-hunting across complex systems roiling through compounding change; liberating under-celebrated gems; and lovingly helping wherever possible to ensure worthwhile, hard-won intelligence isn't lost to entropy or idiocy.
Dear reader, Max Kaizen, Hunter of Genius at your service.
In part, I equip bright people to reply to big changes with adventurous ingenuity. In business and intelligent leisure, to discover and prepare for the unlikely quests, and friendships they didn't realise would help them feel most alive.
The fertile, daunting arena between what is no longer and what is not yet is where reality is most malleable (aka where magic is most likely) and where you'll find my office. Knock knock ...
* fair warning: what follows has unnecessary detail, is not chronological, and frankly, isn't efficient by any measure. But human-crafted, oh yeah. Up for crackly campfire tale or two? ... let's go ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
To my amazement, I've learned again and again that to the observant and curious ⚷ there's always a hidden door into that formidable field you've longed to explore - but written off -
assuming the door is barred to all but those with the "expected" papers. This to flirt with regret, friend.
Outsiders are often the unlikely key to the breakthrough a-ha! that insiders couldn't see. Tis the season to be daring ... especially now, while rules are in flux and reality is less fortified.
Each of these organisations above represents a project that marking a significant branching from which I learned intensely, or made key choices in my skillset, positioning, business model, or understanding "how the world works". I've worked with multinational organisations, startups, governments, artists, banks, media houses, non-profit foundations, and engineering firms. Entrepreneurs and intrepreneurs of every stripe. The unifier? It's always with the innovators and inventors within them. Those who by character or circumstance need to fling open the door to opportunity: but the route is uncertain if they press start, and there's a lot at stake.
Unluckily for my nerves, I am unsuited for the blessed scale-up or steady incremental maintenance phase. My duty (okay, love) is the explorers' R&D frontier where the pace of learning, testing, making and updating our prior knowledge/assumptions is much faster. And yes, messy and risky. But in some seasons (ahem), perhaps paradoxically safer than clawing onto those old crumbling edifices propping up systems in decay.
I may have taught at universities and business schools on tech and open innovation since 2008, but learned by doing, in the weeds of operations from discovery to delivery and distribution. I've started businesses from scratch and sold them, co-founded ventures, designed award-winning business education programs, seeded innovation and mentorship communities, been a bookseller, chef, and surf forecaster, in the war-rooms of advocacy campaigns that that have shaped business models, national policies and international agreements.
Through it all, the single most important thing I've learned that holds across it all: develop excellent taste in problems and people.
Really. Few things beat celebrating with people you respect, after doing something tough and worthwhile together.
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Reviews, baby! Showboating, but I also know it's soothing if you want to check if I get the job done. Many more should you need :)
SIDE QUESTS & SABBATICALS
CODDIWOMPLE CAREER INTERLUDES & INTERMISSIONS
I haven't only been a big dork. Even if today-me is choosing to be curled up in a cosy nook with a book, rather than calculating how much time I have in those last few bars of air while looking up through a daunting school of hammerhead sharks between me and the boat.
Find out who you are and do it on purpose.
- Dolly Parton
oof Dolly, not so easy for some of us :-\
I wasn't one of those lucky sods who knew they're destined to be doctor or filmmaker. No comforting roadmap lay ahead, into which I could autopilot my ambition. So much is at stake in the decision around what to DO with this one life. It felt so unfair that we only get one go at life!
With the existential anxieties of a kid who reads too much, I drafted my 101 to Try Before I Die list. Because I knew two things for certain: life goes by quickly; and rules, even reality, are not the same for everyone, and should therefore be approached curiously and experimentally. You want to make your own, not live out someone else's story.
With it, I had my assignment and was off to the races, with the zesty enthusiasm of someone who'd snuck by the gods to get their second chance: got to live like you mean it, while you can, nerdy girl! wheeee
For clarity this wasn't just an Instagram interchangeable bucket-list, a checklist for collecting epic photo mementos. Okay, sure I had magical experiences like diving with giant manta rays dancing in water so crystalline it looked like they were flying. (Last Chance to See was in my backpack, and the breathtaking beauty, humour and exquisite ingenuity of this living planet deserves witnessing).
My do-before-I-die list was mostly for the different "lives" I wanted to test-drive. Like trying on different characters, as you would in a game. I was determined to find what I was made to do here. By experiment, not social expectation nor anyone else's opinion.
"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." - Steve Jobs
It's taken me to places I could not have expected. Many were cringy fails at the time. But because they were wrung for learning, not one regretted or wasted. Each held clues ...
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There are times when it helps to have an experienced guide in the room, who actually enjoys working with audiences to make sense of things. I might know someone ...
TALKS, WORKSHOPS, PRE-MORTEMS, BRIEFINGS
SIDE QUEST: Seaside Village Café? Yes, Chef
I grew up running around the legs of formidable hotel chefs as a child, but it was the sexiness of Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential that made owning my own restaurant, being chef, feel intense and doable.
Yes, it was all kinds of romantic ideal of setting up shop in a characterful seaside village. French baker delivering fresh-baked goodies every morning before dawn. Pulled together with family and friends. Staff hired for character, trained for skill. Attracting beloved locals as regulars. The city's best jazz musicians riffing at Sunday brunch. Magic, right?
Reality: gruelling as hell. I don't cook frivolously now. Which is how I figured out this bucket-list item was never about being a chef.
Running, and selling a restaurant meant two years of intensely practical (and occasionally terrifying) business education, especially in operations. It was also a marriage-killer.
Would I recommend it? Trust me, it's way more interesting than getting your MBA. But more importantly, if you skew nerdy, there's nothing to beat it for getting out of your head, or kitchen in this case. And awkwardly (at least at the start), among the people. Some of whom will become your friends for life ♥
CAMPAIGNS for CHANGE
aka LOBBYING for GOOD
Defiance comes in many flavours, and I learned early, that the most effective ones aren't served shouty. Role-modelled by hilarious, rebellious Irish nuns who defied government dictates at school; smart, graceful African diplomats as houseguests; and my fabulous, but feisty mother: impeccable manners do not include politely sucking it up when things suck. There is art in a firm NOPE to the things we find to be distasteful or disgraceful.
In keeping with this spirit, I cofounded Treeshake, an advocacy firm that's essentially "lobbying for good" (minus the cigar smoke and backroom deals) in 2011 with Dave Duarte and Sandy Shadwell. On behalf of visionary champions, we've deployed digital storytelling and stoked social movements to successfully make the case for shifts in business decisions and policy frameworks, proving that meaningful change doesn't always need a megaphone.
Whether we're securing safe feeding grounds for African penguins (who, like most of us, just want lunch without drama), internet access for all citizens, winning marine protections for the Antarctic, urban clean air policies, regreening the Sahel, clean water global expeditions, championing just energy transitions, wildlife trade bans - particularly for captive lions or cage-free lives for humble chickens - when you make the right case to the right people at the right time, even the most entrenched systems can evolve.
COACH & MENTOR: Founders & Innovators
Genius doesn't sell itself. No matter how dazzling or evidently useful the idea, it always needs a champion to make it safely through the defensive lines of current reality. Someone to speak up for it.
Eventually we have to sell the idea to get it moving. But pitching is #$!* hard. Cue flop-sweat or brain-freeze if its in person. Or worse, paradoxically over-preparing, and drowning the audience in detail. I've walked this hell.
I became a speaker coach for TEDx as a redemption arc for my own mortifying TEDx face-plant in 2009 (even though I was already a confident speaker and lecturer at the time). IMHO get a coach with battle scars who hasn't just won every round. Or with honest, competitive friends to help each other win.
But mentoring, turned out to be way more fun. You get to enjoy the hard problem-solving bits with brave and brilliant people getting their venture to market. Without the 3am terror sweats of being the founder. Like Gandalf or Dumbledore, supporting the brave ones as they battle through the arc of their hero's journey.
I've built and set up online mentorship communities for executive education programs since 2008. And accelerator programs for UCT GSB Ventures, Seedstars, culture-transforming social innovation programs like RLabs, and Techstars for which I've been celebrated as an All-Star Mentor 2022 & 2023.
Highly recommended! 9/10 especially if you're career-shopping. Want to reinvent yourself in a new field? Mentoring offers previews of what it's like to work in different fields. You will always be surprised. Bonus with mentoring startups: you get early signals on emerging trends and tech before it makes it to shore for everyone else.
Too many ingenious ideas and projects are lost or delayed by decades, because it's gruelling to champion its path into circulation alone. If you've discovered paths through known obstacles, learned tools or tactics, or you're a matchmaker, you've got the goods to be valuable guide too. Someone out there needs what you know.
GROUNDED to GROUNDBREAKING
GLOBAL IMMERSION STUDY TRIPS & CULTURAL DIPLOMACY from ANYWHERE
I think I said earlier that I've been teaching and helping design executive education programs for business schools since 2008. Sprinkling the learning experience with custom social networks, augmented reality and hands-on prototyping with emerging tech as spice. But it took the pandemic lockdown to unexpectedly uncork the wonder that awaited in creating award-winning fully virtual business school programs.
When flight bans ground the planes, US and European business school travel programs evaporated, most classes resorted to Zoom. We chose sci-fi instead. In partnership with Dr Marjolijn Dijksterhuis' Comersion, award-winning XR virtual programs were spawned, turning cross-cultural education into a multi-platform metaverse adventure. Including bespoke 360° cultural stories and home-delivered VR headsets for UNC Kenan-Flagler students to connect local issues and develop friendships with students across the Atlantic. Rotterdam School of Management and Amsterdam Business School, MBAs and Masters in Finance could get up close with founders, doing creative problem-solving with teams and customers of innovative social impact companies, getting a flavour of the culture and developing economy context and outlook. All without the transcontinental emissions ✈
I also taught virtual summer and winter school programs in digital marketing for to ambitious Ivy League undergrads for iXperience. While the students did miss out on safaris, surfing and shark dives; all the learn-by-doing prototyping, pitching and internships were still on, and new friendships were forged (which you know is the best part of most academic programs, right?)
While many people and businesses were in stasis, the pandemic pushed me to exercise ingenuity as a creative technologist. On a bigger scale, these WTF moments of context-squeeze have shoved our species across the gap from one reality to another for millennia. There's no doubt we're at the doorway of the next.
It's a time when many will contract into defensive national insularity again. But it doesn't have to mean that we have to roll back or lose the vibrancy of global collaboration, skillsharing and R&D. We've built proof that with creative ingenuity, and off-the-shelf consumer tech, it's possible to pull off frugal innovation wins against the tide of fear. Even ensuring we never lose the thing that actually makes business school study abroad programs worth it: those prized international contacts and friendships.
SIDE QUEST: Hacking the Business of Art
Remember, my 101 side-quests and sabbaticals involved an embodied identity & hard quest — not picking up a hobby.
I wanted to BECOME an artist. Which also meant having my paintings hanging in galleries, and actually selling. I needed to take what had been a lifelong flirtation. And commit. Including the scary bits. This wasn't about producing beautiful paintings.
Did I look the part? You bet. In my painter's smock and wild hair, learning to stretch canvasses, mix paints, pigments and varnishes. All in, baby.
As with the restaurant, I didn't venture in alone. Cheering, gifts, and mentoring especially from friends who were already globally successful artists boosted my progress. But probably kept me in it longer too.
I ignored a bunch of off-ramp signs. But after 18 months of choosing this path, my works had hung and sold in two fashionable galleries. And though I didn't want to stay an artist, I'd learned a great deal about how differently the art world operates from other businesses, and asset classes.
I knew my work wasn't going to wow on its own merit. Alas. But discovered instead that in art pricing, the story framing and relationship with gallerists carried disproportionate weight.
So as an emerging artist I had to deploy my marketing and tech skills for packaging, positioning and pricing to strategically hack my way through the hard part of this journey.
I not only sold works, but distilled insider business lessons that would help other artists of all stripes successfully take their creations to market. From talks at Creative Mornings, global music conferences and teaching at film schools, to nurturing the launch of the acclaimed Business Acumen for Artists program with Prof Rumboll at UCT Graduate School of Business - teaching & seeding its expert mentor community. Ultimately, the gem of this journey became the thrill of sharing the tools and skills to help others sell their art, without freaking out.
"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist"
BESPOKE INNOVATION & MARKETING ACADEMIES
I knew I'd never be cool, (it's the nerdy enthusiasm that does me in). It probably dawned on me one Saturday morning under fluorescent lighting at computer camp. 9 years old - the only girl - and knowing that didn't matter, because Professor Papert's LOGO turtle had us all racing to build stuff to share and compare, without realising we were programming.
Not only were the doors of creative technology flung open that day. But also, I knew I wanted to recreate the excitement of learning something difficult without realising it. Crafting the educational macguffin if you will, to delightfully fox others.
So of course, designing learning experiences became a thing I can't help doing. Even for birthdays (sorry fam). Professionally, my favourite is the project-based programs that pull students into the future by drawing on game mechanics and accelerated learning methodologies. Developing their courage and confidence to fumble at first, but with prototyping and joyful competitiveness to demonstrate their newfound powers at the end. Each cohort builds a slightly different adventure. A "tools not rules" learning quest with a game master at the helm (yes, a little like Dungeons & Dragons).
This "serious play" methodology is often at odds with traditional corporate training. Many innovative internal projects have been spawned in these journeys, but it's also led many students to discovering their entrepreneurial mission ... and ditching their day job. Awkward. But, for groups that need resourcefulness to move sure-footedly together when the business model or terrain is shifting, it's a win.
Since 2010, I've helped build these customised in-house transformation programs for organisations wanting to develop digital skill and suss across departments. Intense cohort-based quests: less "how-to-tweet" tutorials, more recalibrate-your-business-model-to-avoid-becoming-an-embarrassing-case-study-in-disruption. But it was in forming the Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy where we really got to play mad scientists of learning. The agency's bold leadership gave us permission to be generous, creative and experimental. As a result the agency and clients got to surge ahead, take early territory and awards in digital campaigns and earnings. A rare treat to help usher a beast of this size into their new shape.
SYSTEMS INNOVATION & THE COMMONS
It may seem counterintuitive, but daring innovation has to have some safety to flourish. Particularly when there's a rush as new tools explode onto the scene. Traditional production and distribution is overtaken. Creative possibilities domino across sectors, and fortunes can be made in wholly new ways. It's a mad scramble to keep up. Sound familiar?
Technology needs law that plays nicely with the speed, and safety of many eyes on the code. Because of it, most of our critical global infrastructure has run on open source licensing since the 80s.
Rewind to 2005-2015, a decade of accelerated transformation in how creative works were produced, shared, and monetised. Traditional gatekeepers were being challenged by new social media distribution channels. The game itself changed. Creators were copypasting like mad, experimenting with models that simply couldn't have existed before. New tools, new rules.
Creative Commons emerged in 2001 as this era's significant intellectual property evolution. Nestled in Mountain View, tech-friendly by context, and working elegantly within existing copyright law. CC created a parallel system that enabled creators to apply customised licenses that are human-readable, machine-readable, and legally robust. With it you choose, in a modular fashion, how you want to protect and share your work legally. Shifting the default from "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved". Some = hybrid for new kinds of business models. It has reshaped educational resources, scientific publishing, entertainment, and giant collaborative works like Wikipedia, covering over 2 billion works worldwide.
In the midst of this innovation surge, I picked up the mantle as public lead for Creative Commons South Africa. And into conferences, lecture theatres, boardrooms and bars, arriving with my decks as a "Knowledge DJ" to remix and refresh people's understanding about intellectual property and business models that these extra flexibilities afforded within the law.
Life thrives in Goldilocks zones. Not too hot, not too cold. Human economies and societies, have proven to also thrive in the hybrid zone - not too open, not too closed. Generous affordances of nurturing the shared commons ensure that better-adapted solutions jostle vibrantly to fill the cracks as old systems break apart.
To match the rate of technological and ecological change, we need a new playbook of rules for the high-stakes game we're in. Crossing fingers and nostalgically rolling back to rigged Monopoly will end, as this awful game always does, in frustration and fights. We have the resources we need to make a multi-system upgrade into a post-scarcity, post-hoarding operating system. Except the belief.
As your friendly guide-to-the-other-side 👋 there are remedies that aren't bitter pills.
It helps to do demos. Show, don't tell. Learn the tools. Find your crew. Wherever possible, make it festive. New stuff is less scary with brave friends. Figure it out > freakout.
"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy,
not on fighting the old, but on building the new."
- Socrates (yeah, just not that Socrates)
TECH COMMUNITIES, CONFERENCES, MAKEATHONS & HACKATHONS
Who doesn't love the feeling of belonging to a bright bunch? A place in the world where you can be enthusiastically YOU without the high-wire waltz of maintaining a pose or mask to fit in.
I greedily revel in alone time. But matchmaking makers, connecting inventors to investors, scooping people together for citizen science raids, or into nerdy communities to riff off each other's stories and skills is how I roll.
I've helped assemble serious conferences like the Duke Menell Media Exhange and Mammoth BI, but also shoestring unconferences like Barcamp and Podcamp. Part of the crew for many mission-driven hackathons; be it the bring your sleeping bag weekend of the Fishackathon, or one-day makethons for financial inclusion fintech for Mastercard Foundation, Hacks Hackers for journalism, development astronomy, open government budget hackathon, and water systems innovation hackathons. Generally in the role of judge, but occasionally joining a team to sprint to find a solution, build a prototype and pitch it to the crowd and experts in the field.
These cognitive marathons are a fast way to make friends, dive into data you never thought you'd ever give a damn about, but now do. And get the pleasure of actually producing something with a bunch of once-strangers. Highly recommended healthy low-stakes terror that's much more productive than watching a horror flick (or you know, the news).
The rate of R&D of our hand tools is wildly different from our palaeolithic ancestors, but what still holds true across the ages: gathering people up to learn from each other, to tinker and figure stuff out for fun, before we have to, has helped our extraordinarily adaptive species to recreate ourselves through heaving chaotic change. Creative > reactive.
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SABBATICAL: inter|mission to rewild awhile
Then, in a plot twist.
I entered my monastic chapter.
It wasn't officially on the plan. Pruning everything noisy. Pulling my content offline. No tweets. No posts. No travel. No conferences. No talks. No gatherings. No digital dopamine. No constant harvesting of ideas, no fertilising with external validation.
And let me tell you, choosing quiet can become addictive.
I didn't expect it was possible to quietly keep working on quality projects, without showing up in person, or feeding socials. Yet, five years without fanfare, or LinkedIn! Digital, deliberate, and at a distance, I was still teaching, doing foresight briefings, creative R&D, mentoring global startups, serving as fCTO. It allowed for observation without stagnation.
And, ta-da! like a field left fallow to properly regenerate its soil, my creativity/soul grabbed that spaciousness to rewild.
Stepping out for intermission as a break from the reality theatre we churn in, is refreshing as heck. Especially if you've ever known that disorientating "wait, THIS is it!?" that unexpectedly drops you low after a big win. Achieved your field's highest accolade, sold your startup, wrote that bestseller, smashed that big bucket-list item you've dreamt of since you were a kid? Achievement afterglow confusingly twinkles out like fireworks, rather than illuminating the next path.
Bam! out of the blue your inner GPS signal crashes, and it's unclear where to go next. Rather than dwell too long in the unnerving void, it's tempting to leap through the closest "sensible" door.
Hitting pause can feel like heresy. I know. I felt guilty/indulgent through most of my mine (thanks capitalism). Letting go of the controls is really hard on those who are driven. But recommended? 10/10 If you're in that unsettling WTF NEXT?! moment: don't refuse the call ☎ ... I wish I'd known sooner that resistance makes it take way longer. You'll be offline awhile, but click, reboot, E X H A L E and get that upgrade underway.
Are you kidding me?! You made it all the way down here.
Huzzah! And I say this respectfully: you cannot be normal, friend.
You're demonstrably on the hunt for something.
So if I may, it would be my honour to offer a little bright mischief to illuminate the way. And the kind of company that makes journeys better than the destination.
Max Kaizen, Hunter of Genius, at your service. [bowing with a flourish]
Here for your cognitive surplus ...
