Managers Anonymous is a great way to connect, learn and expand on the art and science of being a manager. Amy and Adam are skilled facilitators who create the space to learn and share across a group of participants with wide ranging experiences and industry backgrounds. It’s a place to hold judgement and advice off to the side and learn new types of skills and insights that, I believe, ultimately makes you a better manager and leader.
I had the pleasure of being Adam’s co-worker while he was employed with Internet Alaska. As a team member / lead of the Sysadmin department at Internet Alaska, he displayed exceptional skill working with both computer/network systems and his peers. He possesses good communication, management, documentation and technical skills and takes genuine pride in his work. Aside from his skill and expertise with technology, Adam is a pleasure to work with, carrying out daily tasks good-naturedly and with much dedication. Had I the opportunity, I would not hesitate in working with him again, or recommend him for any project.
Managers Anonymous and the Non-Violent Communication (NVC) framework provides a practical and effective toolbox of ideas and techniques to help decode tricky management & personnel issues. Listening to, and participating in the group helped me level up as a manager.
Managers Anonymous helped me understand the difficulties that managers face, and how to effectively use non-violent communication in my professional life.
Adam is one of the few managers who is not only a great people person but who is technically competent as well. He’s proactive and motivated. He’s a manager I’d be more than happy to work for again. He cares about his staff, customers (internal and external) and the computer systems that keep everything going/
One of the most brilliant, energetic, creative and talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Adam approaches projects with a zeal and confidence that’s rarely matched. I would work with Adam again at any time.
Adam has been an incredibly valuable resource for us over a collection of film projects and business strategies. His ability to see, decipher and clearly explain complex problems that straddle the intellectual, emotional, technological and social is in my view unparalleled. He consults with honesty and integrity, delivering his point of view clearly without pushing an agenda.
His perspective covers a massive spectrum from the intensity of CTO at Weta Digital during Avatar to permaculture farming – Adam’s spectrum is broad and totally unique. He can help you understand complicated business, brand and creative questions and provide insightful solutions on the cutting edge of the now. In my view – as the business world evolves at exponential rates – more consultants like Adam with these broad experience spectrums will emerge and be vital to the future of business. Adam is a unique leader. He will help you think out of the box – left, right and sideways.
I was afraid that this was going to be some kind of hippy-dippy share-your-feelings and get vague affirmations gathering. There are definitely feelings sharing but it’s with a goal of working out what the feelings are and what the root need is that has created those feelings. This was useful for me to learn for myself, and is useful for working with other people. I got to meet all sorts of different people, in many different areas of work, and realised that everyone has similar problems and fears.
I experience greater clarity regarding both the subtle details as well as the big picture of my problem after consulting with Adam. He demonstrated a keen ability to listen and discern core needs, both for myself and others involved. After just two sessions with Adam, I came away feeling confident with a clear plan and greater understanding of my role in moving forward.
I had the pleasure of working with Adam at Earthlight in the 1990s, and it was an inspiring experience which I have used as a benchmark over my subsequent professional career.
Adam is an leader, his ability to relate with people of all capabilities and position is remarkable. He encourages those less experienced to push forward beyond their past achievements, engages with those more knowledgeable in a open & collaborative manner to bring their talents and energies to the task at hand, and personally can be counted to stand up and deliver.
From entrepreneur, Unix Guru, CTO, Zen Yoga practitioner – Adam is the complete package.
As a passionate person who wears my emotions on my sleeves, I found Managers Anonymous really helpful.
I write this recommendation only because I cannot (yet) afford to hire Adam and pay him enough money to move back to Alaska. Adam has an uncanny ability to identify problems, design solutions, and implement them efficiently and effectively. When I worked with Adam at Internet Alaska, he redesigned the entire email infrastructure to support multiple virtual ISPs, and did so with almost no budget. Existing customers were ported to the new infrastructure with no noticeable outages, and Internet Alaska was able to expand its customer base from ~12K to 33,000+ in less than 18 months.
Adam is exceptionally personable and easy to get along with. As the security officer, Adam and I had extremely different ideas of what solution should look like. Because of Adam’s ability to work with others and understand their views and concerns, the resulting solutions were always superior to anything conceived by a single person.
As a team leader, I observed Adam providing encouragement, advice, and mentorship to others within the company. He always had time to lend a hand when asked, and did so while giving the appearance that he had all the time he needed to help, even when he worked to more stringent deadlines than anyone else.
Adam’s system administration work speaks for itself; The greatest value Adam brings to the table is his ability to work with people.
Amy and Adam’s depth of experience, coupled with the other managers I met throughout the sessions, created an amazing platform and safe environment to learn new ideas, initiatives and processes. Bringing these experiences back into my work life has made me a better leader.
Adam provided incredible cross-team leadership at Weta and was adept at taking user/group/facility requests and prioritizing them on a daily basis to keep things running smoothly, prepare for future upgrades and develop preventative measures. I was fortunate enough to work with Adam and his team to address scalability issues for the facility and he was indispensable in helping our group make proper hardware and system oriented software decisions. Not only that, but he actively pushed other engineers to contribute ideas so everyone felt they had given input and constantly accredited his team before himself. Adam is a real team player, a level-headed decision maker, and more importantly, just a great guy to work with! Big kudos!
Over the years I have found myself instinctively reaching for the phone to Adam when needing help with perspective, implementing a new system or making a considered decision. Oh and also when breaking my website!
He is incredibly patient and always answers my elementary questions re tech stuff with grace and care. He genuinely cares about making things better and easier on all platforms in life. Be it from the garden to the web.
Adam has a voracious appetite for information and contemplation and I find myself consulting him on a huge variety of subjects. He has an extraordinary ability to view any subject matter or situation from all angles and have a measured discussion and make an extremely helpful suggestion.
His tech brain can sort through all the data and present you with an accessible and human choice. I can’t recommend him more highly.
It feels like the ground covered during an hour at Managers Anonymous would have taken me two weeks to get to by myself.
Leading a team can be a pretty lonely experience. Managers Anonymous gave me the peers and space I needed to develop my leadership skills. It’s had an enormous impact on the way I work.