He works with a variety of organisations, ~ commercial, government, United Nation agencies and not-for-profit ~, to help create an environment where knowledge is exchanged freely. These organisations want to build their capacity to learn and share with each other to improve their performance. Typically they learn approaches which will help them to get knowledge to the point of application.
Alongside his work in the business sector, Geoff Parcell is a coach in the non-profit organisation "The Constellation for AIDS Competence" continuing his commitment to create a world where AIDS Competence spreads faster than the virus by stimulating and connecting local responses. The Constellation continues to grow and make an impact in a number of life issues including AIDS, malaria, diabetes and tuberculosis.
For many years Geoff worked for an energy company in a number of roles making change happen. He was a founder member of BP's knowledge management team, helping create an environment where good practices and lessons learned were shared across the globe.
To give a flavour of what he achieved here are some examples:
-
He was a Senior Advisor for Knowledge Management and guided BP's knowledge management activities in the area of innovation, networking, peer assists and capturing knowledge to be reused by others elsewhere.
-
He was part of BP’s Organisational Capability team, making the company more than the sum of the individual parts, encouraging dialogue across organisational and functional boundaries, and developing processes to improve and sustain the capability of organisation.
-
He reengineered staff development processes and helped with manpower planning to ensure the skills were available to deliver the projects planned.
-
He coached and facilitated teams to achieve breakthrough outcomes in a programme to increase the chance of finding new oilfields and achieve synergies when BP merged with Amoco in Algeria.
-
He helped build and grow an environment that supports innovation, sharing and spreading innovative practices throughout the company as part of the First Level Leaders programme in BP.
In 2003 Geoff was seconded to UNAIDS, the agency responsible for coordinating the United Nations response to the AIDS epidemic, based in Geneva. This was a dramatic change of topic and environment for him. The UN wanted to learn how to make global networks work. He helped them to create a “social vaccine” which spreads faster than the HIV virus. The AIDS Competence programme is about appreciating and revealing local capacity to tackle a local problem. By building on their strengths, communities, cities and organisations create a social transformation, where people are seen as the subjects of their own development rather than as the objects of institutional intervention. If you want to find out more about this work have a look at the AIDS Competence website to find out more about the work that is being done and how the approach is spreading globally.
After the secondment to the UN Geoff returned to BP’s Corporate Social Responsibility team to bring the learning from the secondment back into BP. This included developing a global policy on BP's response to HIV and AIDS and getting projects to share their practices.
Since leaving BP in 2005 Geoff has used his breadth of skills, knowledge and experience to help a variety of organisations including the World Health Organisation, the National Health Service, Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University in Peru, Cadbury, CTA, Henley Business School, Norton Rose, Sonair, PTTEP, Theiss, UNDP, UNICEF and the UN System Staff College.
