Life is like a puzzle: seeing the picture with the fewest pieces can be extremely powerful. My central theme is simple: patterns are everywhere. People often miss or ignore them, even when they visibly shape outcomes. Once identified, you can learn from them and leverage them for greater impact by incorporating that understanding into your own thinking patterns.

I’ve been shaped by a lifetime of experiences, with a few core themes: being told I could not achieve something; challenges and risk-taking; success and failure; and, above all, creating a positive impact in everything I do—leaving each job or situation better than when I started. Very seldom have I chosen the easy path, sometimes to my detriment.

My career started in technical roles (software developer, systems analyst, database administrator, technical consultant), then grew into project management, people management, leadership, management consulting, and finally culminated in sales. Major shifts came from unexpected opportunities, significant challenges, and some personal risk.

That journey gave me a well-rounded understanding of business, technology, people, sales, and leadership that is uncommon yet highly useful. It also taught me to consider things from multiple perspectives and to lead beyond my current role. Understanding the bigger picture became a great way to gain cross-functional support and deliver comprehensive solutions to all stakeholders.

Over time, I became the go-to person for handling crises, which increased my visibility and strengthened my reputation. While I was an expert in a few technologies and processes, my career forward was driven by quickly translating what I knew well into new areas. These attributes became key components of my personal brand.

I focus on continuous improvement, analysis, experimentation, and applying lessons learned to achieve repeatable, scalable results. I like learning new things, and I often find that lessons from one area transfer to unrelated areas. As a result, what may seem tangential on the surface often connects to a larger concept or in a more abstract way.

In early 2011, 15 other members of the Executive Team at Ingres (later Actian) and I met to discuss the company’s future. I was the first “Geo Lead” selected to present my region’s financial performance and projections. My presentation included an unexpected extra slide about the barriers to our success—”Why we weren’t winning” – which described our lack of intentionality, commitment to success and being the best, poor planning and weak execution, and our need to innovate. As you can imagine, it created a stir. We spent the next day and a half exploring a better path forward, which led to a shift toward creating an Analytics Platform and relaunching our company.

We knew we needed to do something big and bold, so we decided to build what we thought would be the standard data platform in 5-7 years. I am proud to have been part of that experience, and it led into the next few years, which exposed me to large-scale strategy and execution, including M&A and integrating different, sometimes competing, businesses.

Before that, I owned a consulting company (Comprehensive Solutions) that provided innovative, high-visibility, and mission-critical service offerings to several F1000 organizations. Our team focused on raising the bar while lifting and supporting each other. In the early 2000s, the Internet helped a small company appear larger than it was. That perception created opportunities and experiences, and my team and I did so many remarkable things.

Our success funded several medical research projects. Those projects helped launch a couple of physicians’ careers and create new medical protocols that continue to help people today. I had the privilege of meeting and working with some of the most brilliant people in medicine, and participating in activities that would typically exclude someone like me without a medical background.

It is easy to take ownership of something. Still, a certain detachment is required to really understand it and honestly evaluate the success of your efforts. That detachment lets you make the best decisions while keeping the best interests and outcomes of that something in focus. It also requires trust that your team is focused on the right goals and doing the right things.

I have referred to this as Egoless Ownership.

1. It means you care enough to see what happens, even when it doesn’t align with the intended outcome. The key takeaway is to stay invested enough to learn from the result.
2. You acknowledge problems or faults without becoming defensive, which is critical to making on-the-fly corrections and ultimately achieving your goal. The key takeaway is to face issues directly so you can adjust quickly.

No matter what I am doing or what role I’m in, I still view life from a Consultant’s perspective. A bit of detachment and a different perspective can provide valuable insights. More importantly, helping others understand that perspective goes beyond communication and explanation. That is often the biggest challenge, yet storytelling and metaphors help.

It also helps when everyone focuses on the same goal and shares a vision of success. In that case, the desired outcome becomes emotionally tangible, which is needed to create the change required to do great things. Whether you are leading a project, a team, or a large deal, I have found this to be core to my success.

Compare and contrast what you know, and research what you don’t know. Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions*. And don’t be tricked by an arrogant bully posing as a confident expert. In practice, the most valuable lesson is to always compare, question, and verify your understanding and the desired results (i.e., never assume that you are right).

* I once asked a team of people, “So what’s the big deal with having to shut down a nuclear reactor?” when I was brought in to find and fix a software bug that needed to be identified and fixed within the next 12 hours, or else an East Coast Nuclear Power Plant would have been required to shut down one of their nuclear reactors. This is roughly a 30-day process, and during that time, there is the potential to overload the entire U.S. power grid. The situation was more precarious than I had anticipated when I walked into the facility that morning, but now we were all working from a common understanding of the issue.

I’m sure they felt impending doom given my naive (to them) question. Still, once I fully understood the criticality of the problem, I organized highly focused activities for the entire team. As a result, we found and fixed the problem within a few hours, tested the fix, filled out a ton of forms, and deployed the emergency patch that evening.

Consulting helped me understand the need to filter out noise to be effective. To do so, clarify goals, identify root causes, prioritize tasks, and focus on the efforts that matter most. Structure creates simplicity. Simplifying complex problems and issues is an excellent way to identify the “switches and levers” that create immediate impact.

To learn more about my background, please see my LinkedIn Profile.

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.” – Terry Pratchett

Thank you for visiting, and I look forward to your comments and feedback!

And now for the obligatory disclaimer:  My statements, opinions, and beliefs are mine and mine alone and may not reflect those of my employer or anyone else. Please note that all original works are Copyright (c) 2013-2026 Chip Nickolett.