Phil Preston

Organisational Success ArchitectPhil helps you improve the productivity of your assets and lift your performance.

He specialises in strategic review, social innovation and the creation of shared value (examples) – where financial benefits for business go hand-in-hand with social impact.

Click here to discover  5 ways of revitalising or giving your enterprise the performance edge.

For thought-leading articles on social innovation, check out and bookmark Phil’s daily publication: the Social Innovator.

Tapping into his expertiseIf you own, manage or work for an enterprise that has specific challenges or any of these 10 common problems, then Phil can help you in one or more ways, including:

    1. Analysing the structural trends affecting your enterprise and how you can respond
    2. Introducing ideas that lead to transformational change
    3. Applying socially innovative techniques to improve your performance

 
Phil is a speaker, a facilitator of ideas and change processes and regular industry commentator (refer his Media section).

How best to make contactPhil works with a range of enterprises – the best way to get in touch is to email or call. He welcomes enquiries and will discuss on an obligation free basis. Recent activities include:

  • A complex stakeholder management project for a major bank
  • Running workshops on forming effective partnerships
  • Helping ‘experts’ develop and lever the power of their communication skills
  • Advising on major innovation initiatives
  • Organisational Success
  • Helping You
  • Touching Base

Do you have what it takes to be innovative?

Tuesday, 17 April 2012 07:54 Written by philpreston

We all tend to believe that we are innovative, however there is a distinction between being ‘innovative’ and being an ‘innovative organisation’. Doing ad hoc innovative things is different from embedding innovation into everything that we do.

Adding an apple to a junk food diet is not the same as embedding healthy eating into every snack and meal.

I was reading an excellent piece by Michael McQueen (5 Lessons Every Business Can Learn from Kodak’s demise) in which he shows that, despite misreading the digital photography market in the 1990s, Eastman Kodak was doing innovative things right up until bankruptcy in January this year. So why didn’t all this innovation make it successful?

I thought this warranted more research and went searching for answers. Essentially, Kodak took too long to accept the fact that its business no longer revolved around a quasi-monopoly in traditional film stock.

George Fisher took over as CEO of Kodak in 1993 and he was able to drive cultural change at the top; however according to research by Gavetti, Henderson and Giorgi (Harvard Business Review, 2005), he wasn’t able to change the “huge mass of middle managers, and they just don’t understand this [digital] world”.

Read more ...

Using Shared Value to Retain Top Talent

Tuesday, 10 April 2012 12:54 Written by philpreston

By guest writer, the leadership, visioning and goal setting practitioner, Paul Vittles.

Picture this: A good practice employer. Great pay and benefits. Progressive workplace health and wellbeing policies. Investing in its people. Great induction training and support. Excellent skills training. Mentoring and coaching programs. Management development provided to proactively support career progression. Leadership development. A wide range of personal development programs, including pioneering spiritual development opportunities.

And then one of the most talented young leaders announces they are going to leave because they want to ‘make a real difference’ and ‘give something back to society’. You might be thinking ‘how bloody selfish is that?’ – what about giving back to the employer that has invested so much in your personal and professional growth?!

But it happens and it will increasingly happen over the coming decades. Even with a global economic slowdown, the war for talent is very much alive and expectations are rising in terms of what a good practice employer will provide. More of our young talented emerging leaders are seeing opportunities to ‘make a difference’ in either their own commercial enterprise, harnessing the low entry cost, fast start up digital world, or in the growing world of social enterprise.

Talented executives see new heroes in entrepreneurs who are not only highly successful commercially but are becoming philanthropists at a much younger age. It is also quite common these days to hear young executives saying they want to make a lot of money fast so they can become a philanthropist or social investor.

Employers must keep evolving their thinking and their practice in line with patterns and trends in what motivates their people.

Read more ...

How do you inspire others to change?

Wednesday, 04 April 2012 08:55 Written by philpreston

Change is not an option these days, it is a necessity. As an independent, sole practitioner I can turn on a dime; however the 19 years I spent in the corporate world taught me that genuine change is easy to aspire to, but much harder to effect.

The barriers include ineffective leadership, culture, misaligned interests, low staff engagement, poor strategic and implementation skills and so on; it is a long list.

How do we overcome these barriers? A simple but effective technique uses three key components:

1. Authentic vision

Your vision of the future needs to be authentic at its core. What do I mean by authentic? It will be attainable if it is harmonious with who you are as an organisation: satisfying the collective values of your people and key stakeholders such as owners, customers and suppliers. It will also be aligned with real needs in the world.

In my analysis of the top-30 global companies, I found that only 3 (10%) had a vision or mission statement that reflected true values and societal needs. They were: Nestle (better food to help people live a better life), Royal Dutch Shell (meet the energy needs of society in a sustainable way) and Google (organise the world’s information and make it accessible).

At their worst, some companies, like

Read more ...

Effective partnerships require powerful perception

Wednesday, 28 March 2012 09:15 Written by philpreston

What role will partnerships play in your future?

I recently ran a workshop on forming effective partnerships for community-based groups who were looking to increase their corporate sector involvement, and a key learning from the program is that you need a powerful perception of yourself to play the partnering game. This is valid for all organisations and not just those with a business – community flavour.

Too often we are blinded by the inside-in view that we have of our own organisations. This is not a criticism; it is a fact of life. When you are intimately involved with your own workplace and its day-to-day challenges then you tend see things differently to someone sitting outside that realm.

To form effective partnerships, a fundamental building block is creating mutual value for both partners. As we know, personal relationships are prone to failure if they are one-sided.

How do you determine what you have that may be valued by others?

Read more ...

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ARE YOU IGNORING 80% OF YOUR ASSETS?

  • Can you name your 5 most important intangible assets?
  • How do they contribute to performance?
  • Which ones should you be focusing on?

 
This easy-to-read paper tells you more about the importance of intangible assets, why we need to manage them carefully and a process you can use to master them yourself.

Innovating in another dimension

Find out how companies get competitive advantage from community connections

Testimonials

“Phil got to the heart of our organisational issues with ease, skill and speed. All participants felt he added value, particularly on practical approaches to innovation.”
Simon Rosenberg, CEO Northside Community Service

” This workshop turned the mirror on our organisational objectives and how to best achieve them”
Vivien Mitchell, Fund Development Manager, Foundation for Alcohol Research & Education

“Well planned, thought provoking, developed new ideas and strategies for immediate use in my organisation.”
Trish Hurley, Community Relationships / Strategic Partnerships, Australian Children’s Music Foundation

“An excellent session. Phil made me look at my organisation in a different manner. I can now use this to bridge the gap between PCYC and potential partners.”
Evan Walsh, Assistant General Manager, PCYC

“I was most impressed with the content of [Phil's] presentation. There were many ka-ching…ka-ching moments during his talk and I felt great resonance with what he was saying.”
Pennie Scott, Marketing Consultant, Australian National Institute for Public Policy

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