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Gabrielle O’Donovan |
MAIN SPEAKERS
The International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change in Organisations will feature plenary session addresses by some of the world's leading thinkers and innovators in the field, as well as numerous parallel presentations by researchers and practitioners.
Garden Conversation Sessions
Main speakers will make formal 30 minute presentations in the plenary sessions.
They will also participate in 60 minute Garden Conversation sessions at the same
time as the parallel sessions. The setting is a circle of chairs outdoors.
These sessions are entirely unstructured-a chance to meet the plenary speaker
and talk with them informally about the issues arising from their presentation.
Please return to this page for regular updates.
- Gabrielle O’Donovan
Gabrielle O’Donovan (M.Ed. MIMC, MENSA) has worked with major companies for many years on a range of change management initiatives and her special area of interest is the people part of change management. As a change management professional Gabrielle wears many hats and is an author, lecturer, conference speaker and consultant. Her toolkit includes learning and development, organizational culture analysis, stakeholder management and programme management. Her bankwide culture change programme for HSBC HongKong won an ASTD Excellence in Practice Award plus a Best Practices award (HongKong) and, as a result of her programme, the bank won the Customer Service Grand Award 2003 for the first time in history. Outcomes of her research include a new definition of culture, two new typologies of culture, a new general inventory of organizational beliefs and assumptions, a strategic implementation plan for culture transformation plus pioneering work on the measurement of a culture change programme. Gabrielle’s publications include papers published in Corporate Governance International Journal, Banking Today and Best Practices Management and the International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management. Her new book, `The Corporate Culture Handbook’ (The Liffey Press, 2006) is in the top 1% of best business books for 2006 as listed by USA industry leader Business Book Review. Gabrielle is a graduate of the University of Bolton and has a masters degree from the University of Sheffield. Her numerous professional affiliations including the Strategic Planning Society plus the ASTD. Gabrielle is currently working on another change management book that will appear in 2007.
- Bruce Payne
After 35 years of teaching at Duke University’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Bruce Payne joined the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation in New York City in 2006, where he is responsible for a broad program of grants in health, education, civil liberties, and the arts focused both on the New York area and on the peoples of the Himalayas.
For ten years from 1996 to 2005, Payne was Director of “Leadership and the Arts: A Duke Semester in New York City,” a program offering a deep immersion in the arts for students planning careers in law, business, government, and teaching. His New York students saw and analyzed more than fifty plays and operas over the course of each spring semester, and they studied both philanthropy and the visual arts in the city.
As the Founding Director of Duke University’s Hart Leadership Program, in 1986, Payne has been a prominent leadership educator. His course, “Leadership, Policy, and Change,” helped to add drama, fiction, literature, and film to the teaching repertoire of leadership studies around the country. In 1983 he received Duke’s highest teaching award.
An undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, Payne received his M.A. in political science at Yale University. He is at currently at work on a study of the myths of Plato’s Republic.
- Tara Grey Coste
Dr. Tara Grey Coste is a leadership and organizational studies professor at the University of Southern Maine. Her work focuses on refining the training processes that enhance team creativity and on teaching business professionals techniques to enhance leadership abilities.
She has published numerous articles and presented her work at venues around the world. She is a Colleague of the Creative Education Foundation, Leader at the Creative Problem Solving Institute, Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Entrepreneurship of the University of Greenwich, Co-Founder of the International Forum of Creativity Organizations, and Past-President and Director of Research of the American Creativity Association.
- George Tan
George Tan’s passion is sharing his personal story about how he transformed his rough life into a rich life; how he kept rebounding from setbacks and never gave up. George grew up in extreme poverty. He was badly abused by his father who was an alcoholic and an addicted gambler. He himself was a ‘gangster kid’ addicted to gambling and the 3Vs: vulgarism, vandalism and violence. From red marks in school, George went on to pass his post-graduate studies with flying colours. At 26, he topped his Diploma in Personnel Management. At 27, he again topped his class when he did a Master of Arts in Human Resource Development, offered as an external degree in Singapore by the US-based George Washington University. He did two programmes concurrently whilst holding a full-time job as an officer in the Republic of Singapore Navy, where he served for 10 years.
George attributes his transformation to PRAISE, a life skills model that he developed, embodying six success principles: Prizedream, Rules, Analysis, Invincibility, Strategy and Excellence. George developed the model from his studies of Sun Zi’s The Art of War and Naval Battle Procedure. He broadened the concepts found in these two strategy models such that they could be applied to any life situation.
Developing a life skills model and unlocking the potential of others were hallmarks of George’s corporate career. He held senior human resource appointments at international corporations like Westin Hotels and conglomerate First Capital Corp., where he brought out the best in people.
Having reached the apex of his corporate career as Group Personnel Manager, George decided at age 35 to embark on entreprenuership. Since then, he has successfully managed his international recruitment and head-hunting business with networks in China, India and other Asia Pacific countries.
- Alan Burton-Jones
Formerly UK Director of leading multinational British Oxygen's European computer services business, Alan Burton-Jones moved to Australia in the 1980's, where he founded an international management consultancy practice specializing in the field of intellectual resource management, with a particular focus on the links between corporate strategy, human and other intellectual resources and business performance. Alan has subsequently led consultancy and training assignments on behalf of leading organisations in both public and private sectors in Asia, Australia, the UK and USA.
His writings are frequently published in leading journals. His book: "Knowledge Capitalism: Business, Work and Learning in the New Economy" (Oxford University Press, 1999, 2001, 2005) has been described by reviewers as a comprehensive analysis of the changing role of knowledge in the economy and its impact on individuals, organisations, and the future of work. The Japanese translation (Nikkei 2002) was a business best seller. He also contributed to the development of the report on the knowledge-based economy in APEC countries (DISR 2000) and the first national KM Framework published by Standards Australia.
Alan is a frequent speaker at international conferences relating to knowledge and intellectual resources and regularly conducts seminars and workshops in Australia, Asia and UK on strategies for human sourcing and intellectual resource management. He has recently completed a doctoral research thesis on the implications of human sourcing strategies for organizational effectiveness and is currently working on a new book on human capital with J.C. Spender (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
For further information visit: www.burton-jones.com
- Anthony Le Storti
Anthony Le Storti is the Principal and Executive Consultant at IDEATECTS Inc. since 1993. He provides comprehensive consulting and process leadership in the area of problem solving and decision making, leadership and organisational development, management of innovation, strategic thinking. He develops and is the key instructor in a variety of professional development programs to include contemporary leadership and systems thinking, creative problem solving, diagnostic problem solving. Decision making, team building and development, negotiation and conflict resolution.
Anthony was Director and Assistant Professor of the Center for Creative Studies, Gwynedd-Mercy College, founded one of only eight college/university based centers for the study of creativity in the country. He has designed and written grants for the federal project in gifted education, serving 27 school districts and dozens of non-public schools.
Anthony has also served as Commanding and Staff Officer of the US Army including positions such as troop command, intelligence and operations. He was a District Advisor and provided military advice to officials of two regions with over 190,000 citizens and 10,000 troops.
- Dr. Gervase Bushe
A growing body of practical and empirical evidence shows that Appreciative Inquiry may be the most successful method of changing organisational culture yet devised. Developed in the Department of Organizational Behavior at Case Western Reserve University, Appreciative Inquiry takes an explicitly post-modern approach to the theory and practice of improving organisations. With a specific concern for the conditions that increase generative knowledge and generative knowing, Appreciative Inquiry has proved to not only transform organisational cultures in ways that enhance the morale and cohesion of the workforce, but to do so in ways that enhance the bottom line. Appreciative Inquiry may be unique in offering a theory and practice that fully integrates all three themes of the conference – knowledge, culture and change.
Dr. Gervase Bushe, from the Segal Graduate School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Canada, is a graduate of Case Western Reserve. He has been at the forefront of researching and developing the method of Appreciative Inquiry (AI). His 1995 paper “Advances in Appreciative Inquiry as an Organization Development Intervention” was selected one of the ten best papers published in the OD Journal in the 20th century. His 2005 paper “When is Appreciative Inquiry Transformational: A Meta-Case Analysis” was runner up for best paper of the year in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. In addition to his scholarship he has a wide ranging consulting practice and was selected as one of the top ten AI consultants in the world by the AI Commons – an international web-based community of AI practitioners. He has delivered talks and seminars on Appreciative Inquiry and Appreciative Leadership to business audiences all over the world, including Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, South Africa as well as Canada and the United States. He has given keynote talks to academic groups such as University of California at Berkeley, Stockholm School of Economics as well as to a variety of professional associations.
Dr. Bushe is half way through a 3 year multi-site study of appreciative inquiry funded by $150,000 research grant, and will be able to bring up to the minute findings about what works, what doesn’t, and why, to his talk on Appreciative Inquiry. His international reputation and impact on the field of leadership and organisational change is evidenced by the over 11,000 Google hits his name gets. In addition to AI, Dr. Bushe writes on leadership, teams and organizational design. He is president of Clear Learning Ltd. which licenses companies and trainers to use his leadership development courses and he consults to organizations on transformational change. To contact him go to www.gervasebushe.ca.
- Brian Drolet
Brian Drolet is currently the director of Deep Dish TV, a not-for-profit New York based television documentary producer that focuses on issues of international and domestic conflict. He has paid particular attention to the role of corporate and public media in building public support for government policy. He was the executive producer of Shocking and Awful, a 12 part television series on the Iraq war and is currently producing a 5 part series Lebanon: Imperial Legacy - Battleground of Empire, and an 8 part series Do You Know What It Means to Say New Orleans. Previously he was the Managing Director of Electronic Publications at the American Museum of Natural History (New York) and a senior producer at the Voyager Company. He was the founding editor of Banner Press, Chicago. As both a media analyst and producer he has over 40 years experience in the art and science of knowledge management and its impact on culture.