About Brian

Brian at Marina Beach Park, Edmonds, Washington, 2019

Meet Brian Haney:
The Navigator of Team Reliability

For over 15 years, I worked at the heart of the global internet—Google. My career there was defined by a single question: How do we build systems that are both highly reliable and sustainably human?

From SRE to TRE

During my time at Google, I navigated two worlds. In one, I was a Systems Engineer and Program Manager, managing the complex infrastructure of Google Cloud. In the other, I was a TeamDev Consultant, deconstructing and reconstructing organizational models like Holacracy to help teams thrive.

I realized that the principles of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)—redundancy, blamelessness, and the elimination of toil—were the exact tools needed to fix the broken "human stack" of modern management. I saw that when we treat people like machines, the system eventually crashes. But when we nurture them as an ecosystem, they become self-healing and extraordinarily effective.

Navigating Toward Purpose

Outside of the data center, I am a sailor. On the water, you learn quickly that you cannot force the wind; you can only set the sails. This same philosophy guides my consulting. Whether I’m teaching a novice sailor to "practice the magic" of bending the wind or helping a new tech manager navigate their first 90 days, my goal is always the same: Empowerment.

Why BrianKHaney LLC?

I revived my consulting practice to help new tech managers avoid the trap of "Management Science" that views teammates as units of production. I help you build Team Resilience Architecture so that your team is reliable not because you are working harder, but because the system is designed to succeed.

Let’s re-engineer your team's human stack, so you can stop firefighting and start leading.

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Brian has worked with these organizations

Google
US Forest Service
US Navy
PG&E

University of Washington
Oracle
IBM
HolacracyOne

Contact Brian

About that Pirate Pic

On LinkedIn and Facebook, you'll see that my profile pic is that of me dressed as a pirate. That was just for fun---at first.

Let me explain.

Sure, pirates were rogues, rebels, and rapscallions.

They got fed up being mistreated by the aristocracy, took control of their lives, and organized themselves.
They shared risks and rewards, and (often, though not always) elected their own leaders.
They freed slaves as opportunities arose, often inviting them to join their crews.
They even formed a simple workman's compensation insurance program, paying a bonus for limbs or eyes lost in battle.

Brian at the Google Seattle office, Halloween, 2011

The pirates of the golden age (about 1690-1726) were the forebears of American democracy, rebelling against the aristocracy of Great Britain and Western Europe.

(I wonder if Alexander Hamilton, who grew up on Caribbean islands shortly after the Golden Age of Pirates, found inspiration in those sea stories while he fought in the American Revolution as George Washington's aide-de-camp.)

In today's VUCA world, we need to cast off archaic ways of doing business, rally around shared values, leverage our strengths, and navigate into unexplored waters and stormy seas. We need to form teams not unlike the Brethren of the Coast, but with more structure and clarity of purpose.

That's what I help teams do.

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