About

 The opinions and views expressed are my own and are not the views of Publicis, SAS or affiliates or clients. Some of them are not even my own opinions and views.

Disclosure
This content is here to (a) establish credibility (i.e., blow my own horn) and (b) spur people to contact me to share ideas or, more importantly, give me money in exchange for value.

I’m currently Head the Publicis Brand and Talent Network, and a Client Partner and Head of Brand and Employee Engagement at SAS, a leading European communication agency and the UK hub of Publicis Consultants.  Prior to this I was Head of Engagement at WPP Global Brand Agency Enterprise IG (now The Brand Union). 

I am on the UK board of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC – www.iabc.com) and was recently made a Fellow of the CiB.

A bit about me
I started in marketing and PR but have spent the past 18 years in employee communications — typically, helping engage leaders and people in large scale, complex organisational change. I’ve worked for niche specialist consultancies and giant global consulting firms, and have lived and worked all over the world in various roles.

Along the way I accidentally developed expertise in intranets and using digital media to engage people, learned all about user centred design and usability, but most importantly learned that people in organisations collectively know more about the business than the business does. And we forget that too often.

I co-founded the UK Usability Professional Association (UK UPA) and the Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF) and am a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA). I hold an MA in Social Science from the University of Denver, double first from the same institution, and am a graduate of the Georgetown University Insitute on Political Journalism. I am an Accredited Business Communicator, awarded by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).

I have worked with/for ABN AMRO, Alliance & Leicester, Allen & Overy, Allianz, American Express, AstraZeneca, Barclays, the BBC, British Gas, BP, BT, Coca-Cola, Coors Brewing Company, the Department for Education and Skills, the Environment Agency, Ernst & Young, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Gates Rubber Company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Kellogg’s, KPMG, the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), LECG, McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley, Nokia, Orange, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the Prudential, RCI, Sainsbury’s, Shell, Transco, UBS, UPC, Vodafone, Walkers and many others.

I’m excited about new social media and how it can be used to better engage employees and stakeholders, and also have some healthy scepticism about it … some of it reminds me of the dot com boom and money for old rope.

I believe that in our quest to measure and quantify employee engagement and communication we’ve lost sight of much of what matters and is important — helping people understand their roles and make it easier for them to participate and do their jobs.  What gets measured might get managed, but that model isn’t going to inspire a changing workforce in the coming decade.

I am author of The Talent Journey, and with Dan Gray created the “60 minute guide to…” series.