Brian Rivera

Brian “Ponch” Rivera is the co-creator of The Flow System, founder and CEO of AGLX Consulting, and a former F-14 instructor and demonstration team member and current Commander in the Navy Reserve. His 24-year military career includes roles in NATO, Air and Space Operations Centers, three Geographic Combatant Commands (EUCOM, PACOM, AFRICOM) and a stint as a Foreign Area Officer. 

He is a Cynefin Foundations Trainer and has co-led complexity workshops with the co-creator of the Cynefin framework, Dave Snowden. “Ponch” has worked with the co-creator of the Scrum framework, Jeff Sutherland, and the co-creator of Lean Kanban University, and has led several high-profile digital transformations. He often speaks at global Agile, Scrum and Performance conferences on the topics of High-Reliability, Leadership, Teamwork, and Complex Adaptive Systems.

Following the U.S. Navy’s 2017 incidents at sea, “Ponch” put his civilian career on hold and volunteered to be a member of the 2018 Strategic Readiness Review Industry Best Practice and Learning Culture team where he led engagements with academics and executives on the topics of complexity, leadership, innovation, teamwork, safety, and culture. As a result of his combined civilian and U.S. Navy expertise, in early 2019 he was asked by U.S. Navy leadership to help transform the Naval Safety Center using the same concepts found in The Flow System. 

Along with an former executive from Toyota and a Team Science professor from the University of North Texas, "Ponch" is the co-author of the forthcoming book, “The Flow System.” The Flow System connects scalable methods and frameworks from the military (i.e. Mission Command, OODA loop, Cynefin framework, Human Factors, Red Teaming, Psychological Safety, Wardley Maps, etc.) to the Toyota Production System and the Toyota Way.