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

CEO & Co-Founder at WorkBoard Inc.

Deidre is CEO & Co-Founder, a 3x company founder and CEO, and a former executive at IBM. She’s led high growth organizations stand alone and inside large enterprises, with a unique view on the best of both worlds. Her work with company leaders on strategy and its execution fuel her passion to amplify high performance patterns and remove common barriers. Deidre holds over a dozen patents and has twice been inducted into the Smithsonian Institution for innovation. She’s been featured in several books on entrepreneurship and is a guest lecturer at Stanford, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon graduate school. 

WorkBoard counts Ford, Humana, Workday, Juniper Networks, Astra Zeneca, Zuora, Albemarle, UBS, Intel, and many others among its customers. The company is funded by Andreessen Horowitz, GGV Capital, SoftBank, Microsoft, Intel, Workday Ventures and others.

Deidre Paknad

Everybody kicks off the year with ambitious strategies ... as fun as these events are, sustained focus and speed are how strategies are achieved. In my podcast with Lou Maiuri, Chairman and Group CEO at AssetMark, he lays out the CEO's role in strategy execution and momentum:   
- Setting the pace  
- Framing ambitious goals
- Adapting quickly in a hyper dynamic world 
- Making honest conversations easy 
It's a competitive world, and speed wins races. 
Catch it here:  https://lnkd.in/guWxz5BX

CEO & Co-Founder, Board of Directors at WorkBoard Inc.

Delighted to be back as a guest lecturer at Stanford University Graduate School of Business Friday!  The students in Claudia Fan Munce and Peter Ziebelman's class are always super engaged, curious and ambitious.   

It was so fun to lead with Michelle Gonzalez from M12, Microsoft's Venture Fund -- the students were lucky to learn from her and we're fortunate to be a part of M12's portfolio at WorkBoard!

Being candid, I needed a break the past 2 weeks ... to celebrate with and really enjoy my family's company, to have many many conversations unrelated to my professional mission, to see new places and familiar faces with fresh eyes, to read novels not self improvement books, to sleep more every day for days on end, and, yes to eat more and enjoy it. No LinkedIn, Slack or Teams; no laptop cracked open, no to do list thinking I'd use the "break" to "catch up" -- I used the break as a break.  It was personally nourishing, and created a centered, energized and happy point of entry for 2026.

I hope everyone had the opportunity (or gave themselves that opportunity for) similar joys and nourishment as 2025 year came to a close.  Happy 2026!

May 2026 be a year of clarity, focus, and progress that truly matters.

✨ 𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿!

The recurring theme in my CEO conversations so far this year is SPEED.  Some say at the pace of change, some say at the pace of China; few believe they're executing or iterating on strategic ambitions fast enough.  The cause is often internal ... and it's addressable.     

The business leader role isn't just vision setter -- it's now pace setter.   

🎯 Clarity on near term outcomes raises optimization speed 
🏇 Rapid, frequent alignment is a force multiplier  
✖️ Transparency is table stakes for x-functional coordination

We see a lot of strategies at WorkBoard and the similarities are startling (and confidential).  The strategic intent is always to beat the competition and win in the market usually by: 
🎯  Selling more offers in more segments or geos
🎯  Unlocking new value by working x-functionally
🎯  Operating with exceptional rigor 

Just get everyone aligned and drive fast to the strategic ambitions -- simple.  But not easy, and the real difficulty is often as much internal as external. Here's where internal breakdowns happen and what out-performers do differently:  

https://lnkd.in/gMS5TWhz

The "real" strategy is what gets executed, not what gets documented.

Open article: Five Leadership Lessons from an Extraordinary Leader: Doug McMillon  by Donna Morris • 4 min read

Five Leadership Lessons from an Extraordinary Leader: Doug McMillon

Love internal meetings?  Didn't think so ... check out Rory Thompson's insights in this podcast.

Strategic Initiatives Manager | Pax8 EMEA

When your meetings end, do you have clear next steps, action owners, and due dates, or just pages of notes and more questions?

I joined the WorkBoard OKR podcast to dig into how we are running agenda-led, outcome-focused meetings at Pax8, that bring efficiency, actions and accountability. Greater clarity means better decisions. Which meeting will you fix or kill this month?

Thank you, Deidre Paknad for inviting me onto the podcast!

taplio

The Battle

Mukom Tamon

Deidre Paknad

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taplio

The Battle

Mukom Tamon

Deidre Paknad

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Deidre Paknad's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreDeidre Paknad's LinkedIn Performance