My name is Emile Kfouri and I am the primary author of the Agile Leadership Practice blog. My passion is working with teams and companies to become highly successful. Usually by turning change and disruption into opportunity, specifically through the practice of something I call Agile Leadership.

I am a lifelong learner who is always striving to learn from others and have a very eclectic background. I have studied in Iran, Lebanon, the UK, Switzerland, and the US. When my friends were playing video games as teenagers I was writing programs or outdoors in nature. I decided to study structural engineering because I thought the John Hancock building in Chicago was the coolest thing ever (and no that did not inspire me to become an architect – even though there is nothing wrong with architects that I know of). 

I have over 20 years experience in technology leadership roles as developer, senior software architect, and business manager running cross-functional product groups. I have led and grown small and large product groups with revenues in excess of $150MM/Year. I have also lead large initiatives around data proficiency, collection, reporting, and analytics to visibly improve business decision making and customer experience. In one way or another, I have been involved with construction and computer-aided design since I was a teenager. 

Through those roles I have participated in numerous acquisition deals working on identifying targets, assessing viability/fit and valuation as well as detailed assessments of technology, data, and patent assets. I have also worked on transition and integration planning which is the most critical part of an acquisition if you ask me. 

The reason I started this blog is that I have seen so many competing philosophies on leadership and business that it made my head spin. What I wanted to do was create a place to try to simplify and demystify these philosophies though entertaining provocative thought and meaningful discussion. All the while, trying to have fun and meander through other related topics that I find interesting.

One last thing you may be interested in … After my family and work, Photography, Hiking, and Formula 1 Car racing are the most important things to me. I have been into photography since I was about 5 years old, I have hiked parts of the Application Trail and The Pacific Crest Trail, and I have missed about 10 Formula 1 races since 1983.

If you want to learn more about the blog:

• Best place to start: Welcome to the Agile Leadership Practice
• Example of using concepts in books to help support Agile Leadership Practice: Start with Your WHY (Your Motivation)
• Muses related to Leadership: The Most Influential Book You Never Heard Of

Disclosure:

As you can imagine, a blog like this takes some money to run. Costs start to add up from getting the domain, building and managing the blog, buying the books, writing and editing the blog posts. I am looking at a few ways to recover some of these costs including advertising and links to books that I recommend in Amazon. If you like the blog please consider supporting us by buying the books through Amazon using the links in the posts. In the spirit of Lean Startup methodology, I will be looking at reader feedback and objective data to figure out if there are better ways to cover costs without impacting the readers. Your feedback is always welcome.