Meetings

Experience versus Expertise Speaker: Geoff Parcell Date: 09-09-2008 Location and time: 14:30 at the London offices of the Intellectual Property Office, Harmsworth House, 13 – 15 Bouverie Street, London, EC4 8DP Speaker biography: Geoff Parcell is an independent business coach and practitioner of knowledge management and organisational capability. He is director and owner of practical KM ltd. (See www.practicalkm.com) He co-authored a best selling book on knowledge management called “Learning to Fly”. Following a successful career as an oil explorer in BP which took him to many parts of the world including the UK, Australia, South America and Asia he moved into the area of Change Management and Organisational Capability. He pursued Change Management in various guises, joining the company’s newly formed Knowledge Management team in 1996. Following the success of this centrally-driven programme, he worked to embed knowledge management into BP's core processes, including a significant "Operational Excellence" initiative which had an impressive impact on BP’s bottom line, following one of the world's largest industrial mergers. He conducted a study of how Innovation works within BP embedding the learning in a training programme for First Level Leaders. He also coached business leaders and their teams and helped them with risk analysis, business planning and derive synergies from mergers. In 2003 he was seconded by BP to the UN for a period of 18 months when he introduced an approach for sharing expertise and experience in the global response to HIV and AIDS, to organisations around the world. The AIDS Competence programme is all about allowing people to identify their strengths, and build on them by connecting with people with other strengths, in order to improve their response to the AIDS epidemic. (www.aidscompetence.org). This has given him valuable experience of working in different cultures where English is not the first language. On his return to BP he shared what he had learned through the Corporate Social Responsibility group and then resumed a role in Organisational Capability, looking to make the organisation greater than the sum of the parts. He is now independent and works with a mix of private, public and development sector organisations to help them create an environment where knowledge flows rapidly to where it can be applied. His clients include UK Regional Government offices, the National Health Service Modernisation Agency, World Health Organisation, Norton Rose, Sonagol, and Cadbury Schweppes. Geoff is also a coach in the not for 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. He is associated with the KM Forum at Henley Management College in the UK. Register for this meeting