Leadership lessons with Douglas Ferguson

I am in conversation with Douglas Ferguson. Douglas is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist. He is the president of Voltage Control, a facilitation academy that develops leaders through various programs.

In this part of the conversation, Douglas shares his story related to:

• Douglas's journey: From individual contributor to leader, emphasizing the importance of understanding and empathy in building successful teams.
• Teamwork and collaboration: Discusses storytelling, creating a positive culture, and the challenges and opportunities of working with distributed and cross-cultural teams.
• Effective meeting practices: Highlights the value of rituals, storytelling, and focusing on generation and exploration.

Douglas is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 26 years of experience. He is president of Voltage Control, a facilitation academy that develops leaders through certifications, workshops, and organizational coaching focused on facilitation mastery, innovation, and play. He has helped transform leaders, innovators, and creatives from Nike, U.S. SOCOM, Google, the Air Force, Gap, Tesla, MSU, Church & Dwight, Apple, Adobe, Dropbox, Fidelity, Vrbo, Liberty Mutual, Humana, and SAIC.

Prior to Voltage Control, Douglas held CTO positions at numerous Austin startups, where he led product and engineering teams using agile, lean, and human-centered design principles. While CTO at Twyla, Douglas worked directly with Google Ventures running Design Sprints, and now brings this experience and process to companies everywhere.

Douglas is currently active in the Austin startup community, where he serves on the board of several non-profits, mentors startups, and advises early-stage ventures.

Douglas is a thought leader and often writes and talks about facilitation, leadership, collaboration, innovation, culture, meetings, and Design Sprints. He is also the author of four books: Magical Meetings, Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything, and Start Within, He has been published in Forbes, Fast Company, Innovation Leader, and is a regular contributor to The Future Shapers. He publishes a weekly podcast called Facilitation Lab.

When not facilitating or coaching facilitators, you might find Douglas patching up his Modular Synth, boxing, doing Pilates, and taking photographs. He graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Douglas may be contacted at::

https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglasferguson/