Global Work

Stephen’s work with global clients has featured a strong requirement to engage people across geographies and to generate commitment to strategy and change. He worked with Cadbury Schweppes where he designed and led ‘Communicating for Growth’ development programme for General Managers across European Beverages; designed, facilitated 3 day strategy alignment event for global Communication Community; worked with Group Strategy Director to engage Regional Directors in adopting new value metrics through dialogue approach to a series of workshops. For Premier Farnell plc, he designed, developed and facilitated a high engagement approach using ‘Big Pictures’ to support an internal roll-out of strategy, new brand and values following series of international acquisitions. This programme reached 5000 employees in 18 countries, through dialogue sessions led by senior leaders coached to work with the two Big Pictures they helped to create through their own dialogue sessions. He worked with BUPA Group Finance Director (FD) and his senior global Finance Directors (FDs) team over 3 months, to define a global Finance vision, decision rights framework and transformation roadmap to reflect new global/regional structure; a highly interactive process required extensive dialogue approach to achieve commitment foe change. At Deutsche Bank Corporate Investment Bank, Stephen worked with senior leaders, HR and Marketing and Communications leaders to design a change process to support implementation of a global MarComms restructuring, including a two-day interactive event on implementation for the global MarComms leadership team. For Sig Combibloc he facilitated the design of the global top structure, working with executive team in Switzerland and Germany.

Dialogues and Change Management

Stephen has deployed methods drawing upon creative engagement (using ‘big pictures’ and graphic facilitation), storytelling, action research/learning and collaborative/appreciative inquiry and dialogue to focus on culture, ways of working, leadership and collaboration across boundaries. He is keen to enable personal and corporate stories to be voiced and heard as part of the process for moving forward in a collaborative way. He pioneered, developed and facilitated high participation and empowered work teams programmes in local authorities and government agencies in the UK, based on action inquiry methods, change agent development and strong focus on stakeholder involvement in exploring performance, possibilities and implementation of improvements. As a result, he has developed change agents at all levels in a range of organisations and sectors. For example:

• He designed and facilitated, each year for three years, in Hackney Council nine-month programmes each developing 45 service improvement change agents in which dialogues about power, discrimination and diversity were central themes among change agents and with the CEO and top chief officers’ team (as sponsors), creating a group of trust in which personal stories were heard and growth as conscious facilitators of change could occur. These were complemented by action learning sets he led which were also a powerful container where listening, respect, suspension of assumptions, inquiry and opportunity to give voice to personal truth were practiced and enabled (the qualities for dialogue). The change agents themselves represented a mix of gender and race, sexual orientation and many ethnic groups from across the council – representative of staff make up as well as the communities served and living in the borough itself. The programme exposed discriminatory managerial practices and as these were overcome by individuals delivering real service improvements, and witnessed by senior managers, small steps were taken to change the culture of this most complex of organisations. In year 3, a report on racism in the council was published, which adopted the recommendations into the programme, supporting behavioural change in delivery of services and recognition of minorities, especially minority women’s real achievements (previously suppressed by the culture and reluctance to stand out). Over three years, some 120 inquiry based projects delivered many service improvements to people in Hackney
• Following two years of significant acquisitions by Aon, Stephen worked over three months with the UK Board of Aon insurance brokers in an extended dialogue to articulate the ‘One Aon, Client First’ strategy, creating a ‘rich Big Picture’ as a stimulus for engaging a wider audience in dialogue about that means. He then coached Board members to facilitate dialogue sessions using the ‘big picture’ as a catalyst for exploring the Aon story past present and future. This was delivered to its extended leadership at a one-day conference (Stephen also designed this event) for the top 70 executives. Stephen then worked with the business unit leadership teams on a range of top structure, planning and employee engagement projects, including developing ‘Big Pictures’ with leaders of business units and coaching them to deliver dialogue sessions with all their employees using these pictures as a catalyst. This created a shift towards a strong sense of being ‘One Aon’ and increased employee engagement
• Development of vision, strategy implementation and community building for a Division during period in which Pfizer Animal Health (now Zoetis) was sold through an IPO. Stephen provided key expert input to design and facilitation of interactive large group events, incorporating vision development, cross-functional working as ‘one team’ and action planning; incorporated graphic facilitation, adapted ‘world café’ processes and appreciative inquiry to enable dialogue and create a strengths-based platform for change; he designed an interactive ‘iBook’ of one event as a basis for developing an ongoing narrative of change to support ongoing dialogue

Gender Work

For the Dept. Trade and Industry, he researched, designed and facilitated a high profile interactive conference on promoting diversity in the Senior Civil Service, in particular increasing women represented in the SCS. Bringing in external experts, leaders of best practice, senior DTI managers, HR and other representative groups, this used a dialogic process through exploration of a range of scenarios, to engage participants in a series of conversations about the issues and possible ways forward. He then led a strategy session (with Perm Secretary, Director Generals) in which ideas and conclusions from the conference were considered and actions agreed.

Stephen also aims to understand how masculinity is constructed through having participated over many years in men’s circles and is a trustee/volunteer for a charity working with young men in ‘trouble’, coming out of prison based on a male rite of passage and mentoring programme, staffed by older men working in community with each other.

Clients

His clients have included Pfizer Animal Health, Ely Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lloyds TSB/Lloyds Banking Group, Inland Revenue, The Benefits Agency, Ofgem, Dept Trade and Industry, Prudential Financial Services, Barclays, Medical Research Council (over two years, including HR transformation as change manager) and Nuffield Hospitals.

Stephen has a BA (Hons) in Psychology from University of Oxford and an MA in Applied Social Studies (Social Work) from Warwick University, where he also professionally qualified in Social Work. Further training has supported development of his practice: Advanced Course in Consulting to Individuals and Organisations – Tavistock Clinic; Foundation Year – Institute of Group Analysis; Organisation Constellations Community of Learning – Nowhere Foundation/Judith Hemming.