My Background
Currently
I consult to a variety of organisations - manufacturing, transport, government, UN, Foundations and not for profit - to help create an environment where knowledge is exchanged freely. These organisations want to build their capability to learn and share with each other to improve their performance. Typically I have introduced them to approaches which will help them build their capacity to get knowledge to the point of application.
I am researching into the distinctions between experience and expertise, which is providing lots of learning about how knowledge gets shared most effectively.
I work part of my time with the Constellation for AIDS Competence. This organisation works at community level to identify strengths of communities and hence build a belief in their own ability to tackle issues such as HIV/ AIDS, malaria and diabetes. Last year I worked with local NGO organisations in India, Cambodia, Philippines and Thailand.
In the United Nations
In 2003 an 2004 I was seconded to UNAIDS for 18 month, the agency responsible for coordinating the UN response to the AIDS epidemic, based in Geneva. The UN wanted to learn how to make global networks work. I helped 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. Have a look at the AIDS Competence programme to find out more about the work that is being done globally and how it is spreading like a social vaccine.
In BP
I had an exciting and varied career in BP which started as a geophysicist by spending time on oil rigs in the North Sea, ray tracing and advancing to look for oil and gas fields in Australia, Brazil, China and Vietnam. I moved a change management role when I realised that things happen (or don't happen!) through the interaction between people. I spent time coaching and facilitating teams to achieve breakthrough outcomes. That led naturally to a role in BP's knowledge management team, helping create an environment where good practices and lessons learned were shared across the globe. As a Senior Advisor for Knowledge Management I guided BP's knowledge management activities especially in the area of innovation, networking, peer assists and capturing knowledge to be reused by others elsewhere.
I spent time looking at Organisational Capability, that is making the company more than the sum of the individual competencies, encouraging dialogue across organisational and functional boundaries, and developing processes to improve and sustain the capability of BP.
I helped build and grow an environment that supports innovation, sharing and spreading innovative practices throughout the company by developing an innovation intranet portal, building an understanding of how to move from good ideas to implementing them at scale. I helped capture stories of innovation to be used as a resource in leadership programmes, align the technology award process to include innovation & knowledge sharing criteria and develop a network of innovation champions.
After the secondment to the UN I returned to the 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.
