Surdek Solutions Inc.

WHAT I DO
I help executives, directors, managers and change agents powerfully transform their mindset and leadership style to create lasting change in their organizations. I treat my clients as close partners and care very deeply about the success of their organization, as well as the development and growth of their employees.

HOW I HELP EXECUTIVES
As a trained Integral Development Coach, I work one-on-one with executives to help them accelerate their personal development and become powerful co-creative leaders inside their organization. 

With my help, executives:
- Become more authentic, intentional and courageous leaders to increase the impact of their leadership in their organization.
- Communicate more effectively, have real discussions and elevate conversations to foster their team’s engagement.
- Adopt a systemic mindset to create alignment, understand the needs of their organization, increase transparency and move forward more productively through complex situations with a lot of unknowns.
- Collaborate more effectively with their teams to maximize the use of the organization’s collective intelligence and accelerate results.
- Develop a mindset that encourages structured experimentation and learning by doing in order to drive results and create a learning organization.

HOW I HELP MANAGEMENT TEAMS
I help management teams discuss, resolve their issues and learn to work more closely together to act as the kind of team they would like to see in their organization. I do this through workshops based on the book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni and through a customized coaching program that includes a mix of group and individual sessions.

WHO I WORK WITH
I work with executives, directors and management teams in the information technology space. My clients have revenues or manage budgets between 1 and 30 million dollars. I have worked with companies in the telecommunication, aviation, insurance and commercial software development industries.

Founder, Consulting Principal, Integral Coach

WHAT I DO: I help leaders embrace a more engaging and collaborative leadership style. I also help teams and leaders better understand agile software development practices and how to implement them in their day-to-day work. 

HOW I HELP LEADERS: I deliver courses and workshop programs for executives and management teams that allow leaders to reflect on their leadership styles, develop more self-awareness and learn tools to create richer conversations with their teams. I challenge them around their perceptions and what they feel is possible or impossible to do in their organizations and help them see the possibilities if they have the courage to take action.

HOW I HELP SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS: I deliver courses to help teams learn about Agile software development practices and how to apply them to their working context. I also deliver workshops designed to promote team building and enhance communications between team members.

WHAT OTHERS SAY: “Steffan is very calm and this gives him great listening skills. It helps him adapt the flow of the course to his audience in real-time” – Pierre Leblanc – Management 3.0 participant

“Very good knowledge of the course content and of its application (as demonstrated by examples and stories used throughout). Also, very pertinent interaction with course participants.” – Michel Mellinger – Management 3.0 participant

See more feedback on my Management 3.0 trainer profile: https://management30.com/facilitators/about/?trainer=steffan.surdek

WHO I WORK WITH: I work with Executives, Management and software development teams. The workshops are equally applicable with teams outside of the software development world.

Senior Corporate Trainer

SteffanSurdek.com

WHAT I DO: Since 2009, I speak at conferences and in organizations and I also write about co-creative leadership, team collaboration and organizational cultures.  My talks are interactive and thought provoking and are designed to shift the perspectives and inspire the audience to try something different.

HOW I PRESENT: I use my strong facilitation skills, stories from my years of experience on the job market and a touch of humor to create an interactive conversation with the audience. Although I prepare and rehearse the overall material for my talks and I have a clear idea where I am going, the delivery of the material pretty much changes every time because I adapt to my audience in real-time. My slides are always highly polished and very high quality.

HOW I WRITE:  I write articles on leadership or agile software development practices for a wide range of publications and websites such as The Cutter Consortium, Lime , AgileKnowHow, TechTarget, IBM DeveloperWorks, CultureSync, Web and PHP Magazine, and others.  

WHAT OTHERS SAY: « Steffan has provided high-quality content for SearchSoftwareQuality.com in the form of Webcasts, podcasts, and articles. It's always a pleasure to work with Steffan because he goes above and beyond in professionalism and quality. I have been very impressed with Steffan's work and his attention to detail and high-quality work product. » - Yvette Francino, Editor SearchSoftwareQuality.com

"Your passion and compassion are very evident in your speaking engagements - for all audiences. There are not enough words to express my gratitude for you helping to awaken that  "passion" in the participants in the many conferences we have braved together. Again, Thank you for amazing changing experiences, you stretched our thoughts and provided a road map for even greater achievement." - Marie-Christine Legault, Pyxis - VP Business Development and Partnerships

WHO I WORK WITH: I work with event planners, conference organizers, user groups.

Professional Speaker / Motivational Speaker / Author

Forbes Coaches Council

I am a member of the Forbes™ Coaches Council, an invitation-only community for leading executive business coaches and career coaches. As a member I contribute to Forbes™ on topics such as Leadership, Career Development and Effectiveness and Employee Engagement.

Member and contributor 

Pyxis Technologies

WHAT I DO: I help organizations build more collaborative and engaging cultures through the usage of Agile and Lean values and methodologies.  I treat my clients as close partners and I care very deeply about the success of their organizations and the development and growth of their employees.

HOW I HELP MANAGEMENT TEAMS: I help executives and management teams grow into more collaborative, aligned and functional teams. My approach uses a mix of one-on-one coaching as well as just-in-time coaching to help people become more aware of the dynamics currently at play in certain situations. I also help management teams align their perspectives around the change are looking to create and I teach them to lead the change from a very organic systemic perspective. 

My specialties are helping organizations put in place Agile and Lean software development practices as well as helping create culture changes. 

HOW I HELP TEAMS: I help teams discover and create their emergent purpose. I work closely with teams as an accountability partner, guide and coach to support them in achieving their purpose.  I also work with teams looking to adopt agile software development practices and help them become high-performing self-organizing teams.

WHO I WORK WITH: I work with companies of all shapes and sizes. I worked with companies in the telecommunication, insurance, aviation, web development industries as well as commercial software development. I work with companies looking to enhance their cultures but do not know how and that are willing to invest their time and energy to doing that.

Consulting Principal, Agile Coach, Integral Coach

For fifteen months, as the director of consulting services at Pyxis, I led a team of dedicated consultants that work with our clients to help them adopt agile practices and transform their work environments into highly collaborative work places.

As part of my role, I was responsible for creating and managing the annual budget of the team.  I created put in place tools to track, forecast and regularly communicate financial information to the team.  I was also responsible for ensuring the proper staffing level on the team in order to meet the demand from our clients.

A major part of my role was leading the business development efforts and managing business relationships with clients.  I created and maintained a potential business pipeline.  I negotiated rates with clients and generated nearly one million dollars in new and repeat business for the consulting and training divisions of the company.

In parallel to doing this role, I continued working with clients and delivering public and private training sessions.

Director of Consulting Services

TD Insurance

As an Agile coach, I worked with development teams at TD Insurance to either help them adopt agile practices or help them improve their current usage of these practices.  I was responsible for creating and delivering training sessions on agile topics internally at TD Insurance.

As a member of the methodology team, I helped facilitate collaboration between the TD Bank Group communities of practice and various groups at TD Insurance.  I also prepared and delivered presentations on topics surrounding agile practices for the TD Bank Group communities of practice.  I also contributed to help put in place a new community surrounding agile.

As a member of the methodology team, I also contributed to creating and reviewing the internal processes the team was putting in place.

Advisor / Coach, Agile – Modeling and Design

As the user experience lead for the team, I interact with software architects and developers to gather user requirements, then create user stories, use cases and supporting screens.  The information I provide helps improve communications and collaboration between development, quality assurance and information development teams.  It also enables distributed team members to execute their work with a better understanding of what they need to do.

As the agile coach of the team, I provide education and guidance to the team on how to do agile planning.  I also mentored team leaders on the subject and answered questions from team members.

User Experience Lead / Agile Coach

In parallel to my roles on both the Rational Portfolio Manager (RPM) and Websphere Business Services Fabric (WBSF) teams at IBM, I was the development point of contact for globalization.  In this role, I was responsible for ensuring the team planned and carried out translation related tasks successfully.  

Over the years, I built strong connections with Translation Verification Testing (TVT) coordinators and testers which allowed me to meet target signoff dates for the six (one for RPM, five for WBSF) TVT’s I was responsible for in the last three years

Globalization Coordinator

Acted as the project lead for a team of fourteen developers including two remote developers.   In this role, I worked with product management team to make sure they made the right commitments to customers about what the team would deliver in the release

I also created and updated the project plan for the release, worked closely with the development team to make sure they identified and estimated all work items. Performed daily tracking of progress of the team and reported progress, issues and risks weekly to management Identified priorities for the team and rebalanced the workload of team members as needed.

Rational Portfolio Manager - Technical Lead

Led a team dedicated to developing new features to improve the usability of the product.  My team had three to six people involved depending on the iteration.  In this role, I worked with Product Management and User Centered Design teams to gather and refine requirements.  I also created the iteration plans, assigned features to team members and followed up with them on the progress of their features.  I reported risks and issues to the management team weekly. 

During this time, I also coordinated the deliverables of a team in Egypt and Israel that were doing work to mirror the screens of the product for Arabic and Hebrew users.  I negotiated the DOU with them and followed up with them to make sure their project plans lined up with the release plan.  When they were not responsive to our issues, I worked with their upper management to get a resolution.

Rational Portfolio Manager - Staff Software Developer

Motorola

In my role at Motorola, I took part in supporting and developing Premier CAD, a commercial computer aided dispatch application used by emergency agencies across North America.  I often acted as a facilitator during review meetings between the development teams in Boulder and Montreal.  I also mentored a junior project manager on how to communicate effectively with a remote team.

Software Developer

HMS Software

In my role at HMS, I actively took part in supporting and developing TimeControl, a commercial time sheet application used by large organizations around the world.  I managed the development schedule of several releases of the product, with a maximum team size of six developers.  I was also responsible for designing and upholding the existing architecture of the product

I also performed on-site consulting visits with several large clients to help them resolve their issues or to understand their usability issues or to gather their requirements for new features.  When suitable, documented their needs and got signoffs from them before the team started work on consulting projects with customers

Software Architect

Empowering Executives with Co-Creative Leadership | Overcoming Conversational Debt | Fostering Collaboration | President, Surdek Solutions Inc. | Principal Consultant | Author | Executive Coach | Dynamic Speaker

Life at the top is not always easy for executives. 

Who coaches the coach? Who challenges the leader?

As an executive, you're no stranger to challenges. 

But here's the twist:
→ You develop others daily
→ You make the tough calls
→ You shape your organization's future

Yet who helps YOU shape YOUR future?

This is where I come in. 

I transform executives into co-creative leaders who build highly collaborative, results-driven teams. My approach? A unique blend of deep experience and applied learning.

What sets me apart:

1. Over ten years of experience coaching leaders 
2. Focus on tangible results through short experiments
3. Coaching on a human level through applied learning
4. Expertise in fostering co-creative leadership dynamics
5. I apply what I teach and practice what I preach in my own life

In just 6-9 months, we'll work to:

→ Increase your mastery of co-creative leadership
→ Increase your ability to generate powerful conversations
→ Amplify your leadership impact

My commitment to you:

✅ Ongoing support, even between sessions
✅ Honest, constructive feedback
✅ Pushing boundaries while respecting yours

Ready to elevate your leadership? Let's connect.

Your journey to co-creative leadership starts here!

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