St. Petersburg, Florida

JohnnySaye

Innovation strategist 600+ workshops 4 continents 1 failed bioplastic
why is this
the process?
ok but
who actually
uses it?
Johnny Saye, covered in pink problem post-its

I help people in government and big organizations figure out what they're actually asking, and then build the smallest possible thing that answers it. Before that I played pro soccer at 147 pounds, sold Mongolian vodka door to door, and landed a job at IBM in Spain with 27 days left on my visa. Those are not detours. They're the training.

Rules I run by

Eleven of them. Tap one and it'll tell you what it cost — that's what the chapters are.

01 / THE LONG WAY

The Story

Eleven chapters. Most of them are things that didn't work. Every one of them ends in a rule I still run by.

Read it → 02 / RECEIPTS

The Work

Navy, Air Force, Army, NYPD, IBM, and a city I can walk across. What I did, what it changed.

Coming 03 / OUT LOUD

Writing

Thinking in public, in two languages, one of which I learned in the region of Spain everyone makes fun of.

Coming
600+workshops run
105résumés, 2 callbacks
~300→3initiatives cut, in 2 days
$5,000pitch night, 2023
What I'm for

The problem isn't slow.
It's fuzzy.

Every frustrating process I've taken apart had the same defect. The problem gets declared at the top, out of assumptions. Then the solution gets built underneath it, out of assumptions about those assumptions. Guess and check, forever. My job is to sharpen the problem until the decision is obvious to the people who have to live with it. Not a philosophy — a method. I've run it on a NAVFAC prioritization, an Army installation plan that's still going in 2030, and a plant gate in Baton Rouge at five in the morning.

Twelve years of making other people's problems my love and my focus — and all of it somewhere far from my front door. So now I'm pointing it at where I live. St. Pete has a permitting process I understand because I filed through it, a flood problem I can walk to, and a hurricane comms gap I've been building for. Civic St. Pete is the driving northern star now, and I'll see how, when, or where the journey takes me. Mayor of St. Pete? A nice title. Learning from my parents: be the change and the role will find you.