Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life

Jim Benson's 20 years since university have seen him build light rail systems and neighborhoods as a urban planner, enterprise software and web sites for major government agencies as the owner of Gray Hill Solutions, and, most recently, as a collaborative management consultant helping create better working environments for teams of all sizes. The common thread in his history has the physical, regulatory, technological, emotional and political boundaries of community. Jim has worked with corporate, government, and not-for-profit organizations of all sizes. Taking Lean principles from manufacturing and Agile methodologies from software design, Jim Benson and Modus Cooperandi help individuals, teams, and organizations design collaborative systems. These systems are often built using social media technology as an enabler for communication and collaboration. Tonianne DeMaria Barry’s consulting career spans the fashion industry and government agencies, non-profit associations and Fortune 100 corporations, start-ups and international development. Her academic training in history lends itself well to management consulting, where she contends that especially in business, the present value of the past is often under-appreciated. Forever asking Why and How things happen, she helps her clients uncover, analyze, and interpret their institutional artifacts. Leveraging the stories and values embedded within an organization’s culture, she helps individuals use their history to establish priorities, achieve goals, and make informed and innovative decisions. Much like Personal Kanban itself, she wants her clients to acknowledge their past and present contexts, appreciate the interconnectedness and flow of events, and extract lessons from the patterns which emerge so they can better plan for the future.