Our Biographical sketches
Before starting Anecdote I was the knowledge-management practice leader for IBM Australia and regional leader of IBM’s Cynefin Centre. I've been working as a consultant and researcher for more than 15 years now, and have undertaken a wide variety of projects—including community-of-practice development, knowledge-mapping, knowledge strategy, and using narrative techniques to tackle seemingly intractable issues (such as trust, cash economy, and workplace safety).
In 1999 I co-founded the ACT Knowledge Management Forum (now known as ActKM), an international community of practice for knowledge management in the public sector, and helped to develop the group from eight members to more than a thousand. I now have a new community project underway, a small group interested in applying complexity theory to management practices.
As a teenager, I once played Wally Masur (once Australia’s Davis Cup coach) in a tennis match and was thoroughly trounced, winning only two points in eight games. This spelt the end of my tennis career, but other sports, such as basketball and golf, have provided many years of pleasure.
My professional career began with telling stories to six and seven year olds in my Grade One class at Cambridge Street Primary School in Collingwood. My career path since has been a bit like that of the Apollo 11 journey to the moon – seemingly off course 90% of the time but always heading towards an interesting destination.
After leaving teaching to raise a family I continually upgraded my education, worked in legal publishing and proofreading, became a specialist cataloguer in a theological library, ran my own nutrition consultancy, and trained to be a system tester, finally bringing my very broad and eclectic skills to the world of Human Resources.
Along the way I have become most interested in how people in organisations have the capacity to change, if they choose to. Narrative and stories allow us to look more deeply into the way things are and begin to understand how our interaction with the world of work might change when we decide to look at it closely from another perspective. I love working with Anecdote because I get to do work that matters and have fun while I’m at it.
When I am not walking, taking photos or learning how to be a gracious loser at tennis, I am making things – paper things, fabric things and mixed media things. If it can be cut, glued or painted, I’ll do it. There’s never enough time for creative play but I try to get my hands dirty once a week.
If you asked my friends or family what I have done or currently do for a living, there’s no telling what they might say. “Oh, he does computer stuff” might be one response. “Yeah, he’s a consultant” or “He does something that involves stories” might be others. They go some way to describing my roles and projects of the last 15 years but the reality is much more than any of those alone.
I have a lot of disparate interests and talents that I see as complementary and working in parallel. I’m a generalist in the true sense of the word: a renaissance soul.
I’ve deliberately avoided a traditional career path, along with any type of specialisation. My diverse career has given me experience in business strategy and planning, business transformation and the management of change, managing both business and technology projects, and helping people develop usable technology solutions that address their collaboration and information sharing needs.
How did I end up here at Anecdote? I'm passionate about group facilitation and collaboration and commited to discovering more human, more productive, and more creative ways for people to work together. The team at Anecdote provides an opportunity to do this and to have some fun along the way!
In my spare time, you’re likely to find me with my kids and dog, reading a book or attempting to cycle an obsene number of kilometers in a vain attempt to keep fit. I am a second-Dan black belt in taekwondo and a self confessed coffee snob.
2003 was an exciting year. I was asked to create and lead a knowledge development function in an IT enabled services organization in India. The next two years saw a few successes and a lot of experiential learning from managing the ‘pains of change.’ My interest in how people drive business grew.
2005 was the turning point, however. I was working on a paper on Knowledge Mobilization among Indian Farmers, when I first stumbled upon storytelling. We were looking for a KM tool that was simple to use, could get at the tacit stuff, work across cultures and languages, and would appeal to a semi-literate audience. Stories were the obvious answer!
I gradually began to see stories through a new lens: they were simple and yet more meaningful than knowledge systems and processes. I started reading more and that’s when I first heard of the work Anecdote was doing.
Back in my company, I used stories to build the culture of ‘living our values.’ This happened after we realised that not a single person in the 80-member organization could recall all the 6 values. Stories helped me bring about the desired change, quite seamlessly.
I then spent 2006-2007 studying ‘organizational change’ during an MBA in UK. A three-month study of financial narratives (annual reports) deepened my understanding of organizations as social constructs. This reinforced my future plans to work in the realm of complexity, people, narrative, change, and knowledge and that’s how I joined Anecdote in October 2007.
Besides collaboration and change I like colours and creativity, so I paint. I used to captain a netball team in school and play squash in college, but nowadays I enjoy walking.
At university, I realised that I would never become a programmer when I received a grade of ‘pass–terminal’ for COBOL programming. This led to my undertaking a stream in organisational psychology and to the realisation that I had a real passion for understanding organisations and what makes them tick. This passion has subsequently led me to the emerging disciplines of knowledge management and the application of complexity and business narrative.
When I joined SMS Consulting in the late 1990s, I met Shawn Callahan, and we soon recognised that organisations could reap significant benefits by harnessing their knowledge and information resources. I later became knowledge manager for SMS.
My recent work has focused on the application of narrative in several large organisations—with particular emphasis on such issues as occupational health and safety (OHS) and program evaluation. I also enjoyed working on an organisation-design project for a large Defence-force organisation, and working on a knowledge strategy in the community-services sector. The application of open space has also become an area of special interest, and I have facilitated some large group activities using this approach.
I am a keen golfer and still manage to play a weekly game of indoor cricket.