About Peter Kappus

I help teams to get clear on what they're doing, why they're doing it, and how to get better at doing it – all while enjoying the journey.

I’m passionate about helping technology organisations to improve.

Over the past 25+ years, I’ve been an engineer, project, programme, portfolio manager, facilitator, trainer, coach and consultant helping teams in world-leading organisations improve how they work, achieve better outcomes, and increase their joy along the way.

I employ powerful goal-science frameworks like Objectives & Key Results – OKRs, lean/agile methods, and inclusive facilitation tools like Liberating Structures that help teams continuously push the status quo and redefine their peak performance.

My clients include the UK Government, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Wikimedia Foundation, several global banks, multiple life sciences organisations including Genomics England, Exscientia and Novartis and many more. Check out my CV for more.

A short video with What Matters

I’ve enjoyed collaborating with What Matters since 2019. Here’s a short video we did in 2021 about how different kinds of teams can use OKRs.

The longer story

I was born in London and moved “back” to St. Louis MO (USA) with my parents when I was about 3 years old. We lived in University City between The Loop and Wash U. I attended the John Burroughs School until we moved to Denver where I hung out with skaters and goths and stoners and Mormons and theatre geeks. After high-school I went to CU Boulder where I studied computer science and got an architeture degree then moved to New York City to work for Kimble Musk who was dating my friend and former teacher Jen Lewin. I slept on their couch in Tribeca when I first arrived in NYC before moving out to Park Slope in Brooklyn.

After a short stint with “FunkyTalk.com”, I found another job at “The Stock Market”. I was excited to learn more about the world of finance… but The Stock Market turned out to be a wonderful family owned stock photography agency and great place to hone my technical skills and learn about rapidly building mission critical ecommerce services selling tens of thousands of digital assets.

I sat in the back of the office in a windowless room with a bunch of Ukranian engineers. We took customer support calls, applied a pretty cavalier approach to engineering with Active Server Pages and Perl and went out after work to places like the Russian Vodka Room.

In 2001 the Stock Market got bought by Bill Gates who moved a bunch of people, including me, to Seattle. I was happy to move out west after September 11th. My girlfriend and I promptly broke up, I learned to snowboard and started hiking. I met a couple of terrific designers David Conrad and Jay Dokken and later became a technical director and partner in their interactive design & development agency. We grew the business from 2 people to 12 and opened an art gallery in our downtown Seattle space.

We worked for clients like Microsoft and a very young Twilio and welcomed some amazing artists to our gallery space.

In 2006 I met my now wife who got a job in London in 2009 and asked how I felt about moving “back” to the UK. We figured we’d check it out for a few years and have been here ever since!

London is an amazing hub for travel as well as professional opportunities.

Read my CV for more of my professional work. Check out what I’m doing right now, read my weeknotes or subscribe to my newsletter.