The MPF Knowledge & Learning Leaders' Group is a group of experts working in a fast developing area of management in the professionals. Members are “thought leaders” that recognise the importance of knowledge and learning working together to provide relevant skills and insights to clients and employees.
The objectives of the Group include:
- Link members through a formal network
- Represent the profession to relevant audiences
- Identify areas where members can provide internal leadership and directly contribute to the overall client experience
- Exchange ideas and benchmark best practice through surveys and events
- Enhance and promote the contribution of members to management issues and discussions at firms
Leaders' Group events are open to all MPF and Leaders' Group members. Participants can tap into rich case studies and anecdotes - great to supplement dry statistics from surveys when presenting to management. These are intimate peer-group events to discuss issues under the 'Chatham House Rule', governing the confidentiality of the source of information received at a meeting. Much of the benefit comes from people sharing tacit know how on how to use explicit knowledge more widely or effectively in their organisation or externally.
Participants will learn new ideas and approaches, but what they share will be difficult to copy for quick commercial advantage because it will be culture specific - culture being the "deep" differentiator in most excellent knowledge businesses, regardless of sector. So each event will cover not only best practice but also ways participants have found to tackle typical cultural barriers to implementation.
As a membership organisation, all events are member only. However, those interested in joining are welcome to attend one event as our guest in order to 'smell the coffee'.
Structured: The committee consists of leaders of the Knowledge function worldwide. They create web-based management surveys on relevant topics, analyse results and publish findings for the benefit of all firms so the relevance of issues / surveys and discussions will be extremely high. Survey findings provide specialists, many promoted beyond their comfort zone, with survey-based ammunition to enable them to make a valued contribution at the table.
Ad hoc: A member sends a question to mpfpulse@pmint.co.uk. HQ canvasses experts and members, and publishes a summary of contributions.
Co-Chair: Finola Harrington is Director of Global Learning and Development at Ernst and Young. She drives the global career development framework called EYU which stands for Ernst & Young and You. EYU reflects EY's mutual commitment to ensuring that people own their career. EY is one of the big four accounting and professional services firms. In fiscal year 2011, EY people took part in over 8 million hours of learning across 4 areas and 140 countries. Finola is committed to developing the coaching agenda across the global firm and regards it as the way to build a skills-based learning culture. Fin has worked in learning and development for many years. She has instructed on many country and area programs as well external events. Finola also actively supports the coaching offering at EY in the UK.
Co-Chair: Andrew Woolfson Director of Knowledge Management and Capability at RPC, has over 25 years experience working in information, and knowledge management. Previously Andrew spent 2 years as the Global Director for IT and knowledge at BDO International and 11 years as BDO UK's Knowledge Director. Prior to BDO Andrew has worked in a variety of information and knowledge roles for KPMG, Reuters, Shell and Oxford Analytica. Andrew's career to date has tracked the rise of KM as a key aspect to the way organisations mobilise their experience, capabilities and knowledge.
Co-Director: Simon Lord, Financial Times
Co-Director: Stephen Perry is a Social Business and Knowledge Management Advisor with over 25 years experience in four professional services firms: Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, KPMG, Hill Samuel Bank and Ashurst. He has been working in knowledge management since the mid 90's helping organisations share knowledge and collaborate across organisational boundaries. While at KPMG, Steve led the implementation of KClient, the client collaboration solution and was part of the global implementation team for KWorld, the global knowledge sharing system. Steve also worked on client advisory assignments in Financial Services and Government. At Freshfields, Steve was head of knowledge and business development systems and led the implementation of social business solutions including the enterprise-wide Confluence wiki intranet. Since September 2010 he has been at the Institution of Engineering and Technology as Head of Communities, running their worldwide Technical Professional Networks and Local Networks.
Gerard Bredenoord is the director and owner of the boutique firm Knowledge Innovations Ltd. Gerard’s focussed on providing insight and expertise to help organisations manage their knowledge more efficiently and cost effectively. Having work at PwC for 16 years, where he had been specialising in knowledge management for the past 9 years, he has spent the last 3.5 years at Linklaters as the Head of Knowledge. His core competency (speciality) is managing global and multi-disciplinary teams focussing on changing ideas into real solutions that can be rolled out and utilised. His methods are grounded in collaborative design, development, and implementation. Utilising the cultural diversity inherent to global organisations to ensure solutions are representative of the organisation. He strives to understand cultures by living in those cultures and being able to respect the differences while finding common grounds to build teams in a short period of time to deliver organisational value. He has practical experience in providing advice and support on knowledge strategies (specialising in multi-jurisdictional networks), financial investments and metrics, implementation priorities, implementation roadmaps and organisational structures.
Steve Bynghall - is a freelance consultant and writer, specialising in
knowledge management, collaboration, intranet and web solutions.
Following an MSc in Information Science from City University, Steve worked
at accounting firm BDO LLP for over thirteen years, working in various
knowledge roles including managing the firm's global extranet programme. In
2010 he left BDO to set up Two Hives Ltd. As well as client work, Steve is
currently working on various projects for the Intranet Benchmarking Forum
(IBF) and authors the annual report for Step Two Design's Intranet
Innovation Awards. He has co-written a book with Ross Dawson about
Crowdsourcing and has a regular online column for Outsource magazine.
Lucy Dillon - Lucy joined City law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP five years ago as their first Director of Knowledge Management. Prior to that, she was at City firm, Linklaters, both as a practising lawyer and as a Professional Support Lawyer in the firm’s litigation department. In addition to the role of PSL, Lucy was central co-ordinator for the firm’s PSLs.At Berwin Leighton Paisner, Lucy is responsible for developing and implementing the firm’s KM strategy and managing its KM processes. Lucy has been responsible for the redesign of the firm’s award winning intranet and KM technology, a programme of improvements to the firm’s precedent collection, the launch of a series of know-how initiatives for clients and expansion on the business intelligence offering from the library. Her team includes the PSLs and the library and she encourages lawyers from across the practice to participate in KM initiatives. Lucy has an MBA in law firm management and is a regular speaker at KM conferences and has contributed articles to a number of legal, business and KM journals.
Kevin Wheatly joined the Deloitte Knowledge, Research & Intelligence team in March 2007 as Senior Knowledge Manager for the Consulting practice in the UK, he is also manages a team of knowledge managers operating across the other service lines and industries within the UK. He is a Knowledge Manager with over 16 years experience in a number of large professional services and technology firms focussing on KM strategy, processes, deployment and community development. Previously working for SAP he was responsible for KM within EMEA for the newly formed Value Engineering team (consultative approach to software selling) and also a senior global KM role within the Field Services KM team. Prior to that he spent 7 years with IBM within Business Consulting fulfilling a variety of KM roles within the Industrial and primarily Chemicals & Petroleum practices. He was also responsible for Industry training for the Chemicals & Petroleum segment globally designing, planning and running the training programme. Throughout his career Kevin has also been involved with a number of KM projects giving advice to clients in a wide range of industries.
