The Chief Excellence Officer™️ Academy

I teach and coach frontline managers to how to build an operating system that transforms strategy into excellence through their team.


ACCOMPLISHMENTS
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1
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Invented the OKR Quality Matrix, a tool used by managers in hundreds of companies to craft OKRs that measure what really matters.

2
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Invented the OKR Activation Canvas, a tool used by managers in hundreds of companies to create operational clarity and link it to the strategic clarity brought by OKRs.

3
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Creator of the following online programs:

• Questexcellence: The OKR Accelerator for Managers.
• Zero⭕️ → 🟢OKR Playbook for Managers

4
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Author of "How to Activate OKRs - The 3 Step Uplift Protocol That Determines OKRs That Get Accomplished From Those That Languish"

Founder

AFRINIC

Scale and integrate AFRINIC's training offerings into a capacity development and professional services program from strategy development to execution and quality control.


ACCOMPLISHMENTS
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1
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Built afrinic.academy, a bilingual e-learning platform used by 4700+ engineers from over 80 countries with a median course Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 47 by developing all the required skills in-house, saving the company $250,000/annum.

2
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Designed & launched the company's cohort-based course (“Zero to IPv6 Certified in 21 days”), which has received a median NPs of 57 from 2500+ engineers from 61 countries by implementing Agile Instructional Design.

3
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Invented the Deployathon, which helps 150+ network operators to achieve 400+ IPv6 & RPKI deployment milestones yearly.


4
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Launched certi6.io, the only bilingual IPv6 Forum Gold Certified certification with a 3-person team by implementing 4DX (the 4 Disciplines of Execution) creating a 500-question bank covering all 6 Bloom levels within 1 year.

5
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Built my team into the company’s model for operational excellence by implementing 11 ISO 9001:2015-certified processes to a median maturity level of 7 on a 10-point scale.

6
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Drove adoption of OKRs as the company's strategy execution framework across 80% of teams by facilitating a 5-day leadership retreat.

7
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Designed the U-Connect partnership program and onboarded 17 universities in 3 countries to train 250 post-graduate students.

8
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Earned an induction into the global IPv6 Forum Hall of Fame as an evangelist by training and advocacy of 7000+ engineers in 70+ countries.

Head of Capacity Building

Research, design and develop training courses to promote next generation (IPv6) Internet technology development in Africa. Targeting network engineers, governments and business executives.


ACCOMPLISHMENTS


1
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Created the IPv6 Forum Certified Systems Engineer program by analysing gaps in the current certification offerings with respect to systems engineer’s job requirements. 

2
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Developed a program which trained at least 600 engineers across 16 countries with a median NPS of 70 each year by designing curricula, building a team and standardising processes.

3
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Grew demand 550% and participants’ satisfaction 60%(from 2010 levels) through systematic analysis and implementation of workshop feedback in key areas of trainers’ delivery, content and event logistics. 

4
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Designed a testbed that's been used by over 50,000 engineers through 15 labs on 4 continents by standardising an architecture that integrates virtual machines to physical routers.

5
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Secured $150K from the European Commission (6Deploy project) by showcasing the excellent ratings (median NPS of 70) we were consistently getting from 600+ engineers each year.

6
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Cut per workshop costs by 60% ($65k p.a) while increasing duration from 3 to 4 days by creating a course experience for which all partners were willing to sponsor all fixed costs and 25% of travel costs each year.

7
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Created the world’s first IPv6 Strategy & Planning course, which has been taken by 500 executives with a median NPS of 82 by analysing the implications of IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 through the lenses of the business and mission model canvas.

8
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Delivered a keynote presentation to 500 tech leaders, including 7 gov't ministers, at the African Development Bank's first Ministerial Forum on ICT Integration in Education (2013).

9
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Rated “Excellent” on all KPIs for trainers by at least 90% of all course participants by continuously adapting my delivery based on course feedback.

Training Manager

UNDP

During this brief stint, I developed the agency's IT strategic plan to leverage IT in medical records management, improving interest in and access to education in order to support the MDGs.

ICT Coordinator

Ahmadu Bello University - Zaria

Manage the development evolution of a 7000+ node  IP network.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
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1
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Cut network outages by 80%  by redesigning the internal network to replace multiple levels of internal address sharing (NAT) with dynamic routing using OSPF.

2
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Created the university’s Standards for Networking & Documentation policy which improved IT contract sustainability by ≥ 50% and was adopted by 20 other universities.

3
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Increased project post-handoff success by 50% by creating standardised templates for documenting the work done by contractors.

4
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Designed and implemented the university’s first traffic monitoring system, increasing networking traffic visibility by 95% using free open-source software.

5
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Wrote “The Ntop User’s Guide”, which was used by 4000+ engineers worldwide to get started with free open-source traffic monitoring using the ntop utility. 

6
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Designed and installed a 75 access-point enterprise WiFi network which served 1,500 nodes on time and on budget as proof of concept of my undergraduate project.

7
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Initiated and co-taught the Effective IT-management track for ≥ 150 ICT Directors at the annual Nigerian Network Operators’ Group.

8
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Led the development of the first network services strategic plan by facilitating SWOT & goal-setting brainstorming sessions. 

9
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Increased adoption of Linux on the desktop by 100% within the team by modelling Ubuntu’s functional & aesthetic elegance. 

10
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Implemented eGroupware to enhance internal collaboration, resulting in a 60% decrease in email reliance and a 57% increase in productivity.

Systems Analst/Network Engineer

Nigerian Network Operators' Group (ngNOG)

Objective: promote effectiveness use of ICTs in the Nigerian universities through training.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

1
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Co-authored (with Prof. Len Liverpool and Geraldine Daloengg) “Guide to ICT Policy & Strategy for African Higher Educational Institutions” to help ≥ 500 universities in Africa develop effective IT strategies. 

2
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Initiated and co-taught the Effective IT-management track for ≥ 150 ICT Directors at the annual Nigerian Network Operators’ Group.

3
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Selected as one of 7 trainers in Nigeria that reviewed the curriculum and strategic plan of Nigerian Network Operators’ Group. I introduced mind mapping to the group and led its use in brainstorming sessions.

Instructor (volunteer)

Kaduna Business School

Led organization´s IT development and general innovation, developed and taught IT-Business Integration, Six Sigma & Project Management executive development courses and consulting jobs.


ACCOMPLISHMENTS
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1
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Designed and implemented an engagement campaign across 5 states, which would later become the Nigerian Research & Education Network, by recruiting and leading a 5 team of former bosses & professors.

2
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Rated “Excellent” on all KPIs  by at least 60% of ≥1000 executives in Project Management & Lean Six Sigma executive education courses by experimenting with different delivery methods.

3
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Mapped 7 core processes at the military ordnance factory in Kaduna, setting the stage for Six Sigma implementation, which doubled factory output without increasing CAPEX.  

4
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Delivered the inaugural presentation (“Internet Business Intelligence”) at the school’s launch, attracting an “Excellent” rating from 90% of the 25 participants.

5
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Raised the median score of presentation quality for executive education content from 40% to 91% by pioneering the use of movie clips within slides & case studies.

6
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Raised the quality of the school’s presentations by 60% by designing standard presentation templates & modelling engaging presentations to the other instructors.

7
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Developed the proposal that won the school its first in-house training contract for 75 senior staff of the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology.

Management Consultant & IT Coordinator

WWL Ltd

Responsible for developing proposals to client solutions, managed a 25 node CyberCafe network and providing technical support to clients. 


ACCOMPLISHMENTS
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1
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Raised equipment uptime by 60% by implementing a rigorous Friday night maintenance schedule.

2
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Implemented an email system that served 500 staff of the Energy Commission of Nigeria by using Sendmail deployed on RedHat Linux. 

3
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Boosted cybercafe revenue by $10,000/month by using  Windows Registry hacks to prevent bypass of the billing software to steal Internet services. 

4
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Performed routine maintenance of 120 PCs in three cities (Jos, Gombe & Yola) over 3 days for First Bank of Nigeria.

Junior IT Consulting & Support Engineer [Internship]

Do you believe the best way to motivate a team is to get them to experience #excellence? then you'd love working with and for me. 

I created certi6.io (with a team of two) - the world's only bilingual IPv6 certification platform. I have trained over 3000 executives, managers and engineers in over 40 countries.

I design and implement systems that:

💎 Inspire people to do work that fills them with pride, producing services that clients adore.

💎 Produce learning experiences that captivate and drive people to flourish.

💎 Take the guesswork out of strategy execution.

Check https://www.perfexcellence.com for my resources and services.

Mukom Tamon

Kane Lyons Consulting

Partnering with business leaders to design and implement better ways of working, resulting in a happier, more attractive, effective, and faster-growing business.


Focus areas include:

- Organisational Health: The ability of the business to align around a shared vision and strategic goals, supported by its culture, teamwork, and ability to adapt for long-term (lasting) success.

- Leadership Coaching: Support for leaders at all levels to be championed, challenged, and developed, resulting in insight-driven growth, increased engagement, creativity and performance.

- Operational Capabilities: Optimising how the company plans and functions to find better ways of working that drive efficiency, are true to purpose and capitalise on opportunities to deliver growth.

- Management Training: By improving key skills like goal setting, communication, and emotional intelligence, people managers can better motivate and develop their teams for organisational success.

- Recruitment: Identifying gaps in business needs and employing years of experience to find the best fit based upon skills, characteristics, shared vision and values.

- Customer & Brand Marketing: Helping brands define, understand, attract, and delight customers. I was fortunate enough to hone my customer-obsession tools from experts during my decade at Amazon. 

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Founder-led Business Growth Coach

Kane Lyons

1-1 and business-wide programmes, working with emerging and current leaders who want support to perform at a higher level and with greater fulfilment.

+500 hours of client work. Accredited by the International Coaching Federation.


"Kane is quite simply brilliant. He actively listens and has a real knack for understanding who you are. Your purpose, what gives you energy, and any challenges you need to lean into. He’ll work with you to provide clarity on the things that you value most, and ultimately bring your best self to work every day."
     - Conrad Doyle, Head of Digital

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Leadership Development

Bird & Blend Tea Co.

12-month transformation project at innovative tea mixologists, Bird & Blend Tea Co. Working with founders/SLT as CoS to scope and embed strategic change in the organisation and across their leadership.


Responsibilities include:
 - Leadership development programme
 - Company goals & KPI process 
 - Mission and values
 - Organisational culture and design 
 - Strategic counsel
 - People management training
 - Rhythm of the business 
 - Meeting effectiveness
 - Communications
 - Recruitment


"Kane has worked with us over a year on a project to solidify our overarching business strategy, map out a path to achieve it, shape and lead hiring a senior leadership team to deliver and then work on embedding a new way of working focussed on this direction. This was under the Chief of Staff title.

Over the period, supporting and alongside the main missions above, Kane has supported us in successfully navigating an extremely challenging environment by jumping into a number of ad-hoc projects. He also gave 1:1 coaching to various senior and future senior leaders (myself included) which had a huge impact."
 - Mike Turner, Founder & MD

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Chief of Staff

Vivobarefoot

*Tenure cut short due to COVID impact on business*


Primary responsibilities included:
 - Department ownership
 - Leadership counsel
 - People development and training
 - Budget and working process optimisation
 - Cross-function relations and collaboration
 - Stakeholder management

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Head of Digital

Liberty.

Built a digital function that delivered against stretch commercial goals in a period of rapid growth.


Primary responsibilities included:
 - Scoping/recruiting/developing a team of high-performing experts
 - Department strategy, planning and performance management
 - Strategic leadership, future-leader development and C-Suite partner
 - Process optimisation and effective ways of working
 - Internal relationship building and strategic 3rd party management
 - Growth initiatives and special project ownership
 - Manager training program


"I hired Kane in 2018 as the Head of Digital Marketing. In the time he was with us, he made both a significant commercial impact, and left a memorable and inspiring legacy with those who worked with him." 
     - Eric Ferguson, E-commerce Director

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Head of Digital Marketing

Amazon

Creation of a centralised marketing team, the tools and processes needed to successfully deliver and operate Amazon's first Pan-EU business. 


Primary responsibilities included:
 - Creation of new working processes to enable operation & and growth across EU
 - Building Amazon's first EU-centralised marketing department
 - Leading pitches to strategic partners and holdout brands
 - Managing effective sell-thru of +800 brands through strategic planning and optimisation
 - Creating data-led business cases to support funding of CX projects across 5 markets
 - Achieving against stretch customer growth goals
 - Partnering with design, buying, and inventory leads to drive P&L targets
 - Scoping multivariate testing across site and major traffic channels
 - Leadership counsel and training of future leaders across EU


"Kane is the rare breed of person who combines intellect, data, and art with an inherent ability to earn trust across large groups of stakeholders. He is a thoughtful, respected leader with a skill set to dive deep into marketing and business problems, simplify them, and then deliver/execute solutions." 
     - Daniel Silverfield, Director

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EU Head of Marketing Operations

Ownership of customer and brand growth for the Amazon Fashion business.


Primary responsibilities included:
 - Creating data-led customer-insight initiatives to drive stretch KPIs
 - Scoping and aligning processes for efficiency gains across EU businesses
 - Identifying web enhancements to drive product discovery and conversion
 - Ownership of the customer acquisition/retention strategy
 - Leading pitch process and brand relations for strategic partners
 - Team management and people development
 - Leadership partner and strategic counsel


"Kane is a talented marketing strategist and a great leader of people. I worked extensively with Kane as part of the Amazon Fashion team and was consistently impressed by his ability to deliver results within a highly ambiguous working environment."
     - Jess Brown, Director

Head of Marketing | Amazon Fashion

Senior Site Merchandising Manager

Site Merchandising Manager

Klein O'Rorke

Marketing Manager for a strategic brand & communications consultancy.

Marketing Manager

SweetShisha

Owner-operator of an eCommerce business - sourcing Middle Eastern antiquities for the European market.

Dixons Retail

Web editor and content creator for the Currys, Dixon and PC World websites.

Online Content Manager

I help scale-ups and their leaders through sticky periods of company, team and personal growth.

With experience in organisational excellence across leadership, strategy, culture and business processes, alongside a genuine passion for human behaviour and development, I deliver long-term improvement in performance.

After ten years leading successful teams at Amazon and identifying customer, commercial, and operational opportunities, I have a broad and effective toolkit. Combined with critical thinking, common sense and connection, I solve what are often complex and systemic challenges that negatively impact the business.

I'm an ICF-accredited coach who takes a humanistic approach, revealing truly what's hidden behind words and behaviours and getting to the real work needed for positive change. This is critical when working with founders, leaders, and teams to identify what is truly hurting and in need of attention.

My career has taken me from Amazon's mass markets to iconic specialists Liberty London, where as a part of Executive Teams I've helped drive transformation by embedding the foundations for growth, enabling super-talented people and delivering end-to-end organisational improvement strategies.

 
My toolkit includes: 

• Problem-Solving - When companies know something fundamental isn’t working (and even when they don’t) but feel paralysed, I identify and resolve key issues and provide the best chance of success.

• People Development - Guiding to insight, offering new perspectives and overcoming blockers for greater professional impact and personal fulfilment. Specialising in founders, leaders and their teams.

• Culture - How you leave someone feeling when they touch your brand. From your people to your customers. It’s your core values and how they show up. Embedding them is INVALUABLE work.

• Strategic Thinking - Charting a route to scalable growth by leveraging cross-functional experience to recognise patterns, hold the big picture and connect the dots to achieve ambitious goals.

• Communication - Love engaging with a range of audiences both inside and outside the company to build strong relationships, deliver key messages, and create authentic motivation for change.

• Senior Partner - Contributing to strategic improvement as a trusted partner with experience in building cohesive and potent C-suite teams founded on trust, commitment, shared purpose, and ownership.

• Organisational Development - Certified practitioner with AIHR Academy.

taplio

The Battle

Mukom Tamon

Kane Lyons

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