FOURTEEN EXPERTS. FIVE DAYS

SONJA BLIGNAUT

Topic: Sensemaking in Complexity

 Sonja is an internationally recognised specialist in the field of complexity.  She is a thinking partner to senor leaders and teams and consults broadly in the practical application of ideas and methods from complexity science and narrative.  She has a background in ecosystem sciences and holds a degree in Meteorology.

Sonja is the founder of More Beyond Pty Ltd and acting CEO of Cognitive Edge, founded by Prof Dave Snowden, the author of the Cynefin framework.  They offer consulting and training in Sense-making, Complexity and Leading in Uncertainty.

She is certified in various coaching modalities, an expert facilitator and sought after speaker, keynoting at various conferences locally and internationally.

HERMAN SINGH

Topic: Digital evolution in the age of a pandemic

Herman is ceo of Future Advisory, a digital transformation and start up acceleration firm operating globally.  He was previously the CDO of the MTN group where he was also deputy chairman of Jumia, Africa’s first unicorn as well as chairman of its JV insurance business and on the board of MTN Ivory Coast and Cameroon.

He was previously the digital executive for Vodacom and was for 12 years in a similar director level position at Standard Bank.

Herman is an engineer with MD experience at both Siemens and Reunert for 20 years.

He has coauthored the best selling Operations Management book in the region and his new Book , titled Di-volution, will be out on Amazon by August.

He is an Associate Professor at GSB at UCT and at UJ and is adjunct faculty at Duke Business School and the Centre for Creative Leadership both in North Carolina.

His podcast series available on the link below is ranked in the top ten on iTunes in Business and Technology in South Africa.

podlink.to/divolution
www.futureadvisory.co.za
www.di-volition.com
www.linkedin.com/in/herman-singh-b669357

DR. SONJA FOURIE

Topic: Data – The new Currency

Being the founder of Customer Science Lab PTY LTD, Dr Sonja Fourie is an entrepreneur with a passion for driving shareholder value and innovation from customer experience driven propositioning supported by data analytics and digital enablement. Her specific focus is on developing customer and employee asset value with a specialization in customer loyalty programs, employee rewards and sponsorships. Sonja has a 14-year foundation in Information Technology, 17 years’ experience in strategic business development (financial products, co-brands and loyalty) and a passion for innovation, teamwork and enabling sustainable systemic change. She believes in the holistic development of people and teams to deliver capabilities from which customer experience-lead design solutions can be launched. Her career has been marked by delivering interventions at scale redefining and disrupting markets while creating sustainable competitive advantage for shareholders.

www.customersciencelab.com

MATT MORASKY

Topic: From Lemons to Lemonade: Re-thinking Opportunity in Times of Change

Matt Morasky is an award-winning creative director, consultant, visual thinker, and author who comfortably straddles the business and creative worlds.

Matt is a co-author of The Art of Opportunity, (John Wiley & Sons, 2016) a practical guide to identifying, developing and seizing growth opportunities using hands-on, visual-thinking activities, illustrated theory and contemporary case studies. Matt has written articles and contributed interviews about visual thinking, business, and design for publications including Fast Company and HOW.

For more than a decade Matt has helped organizations approach, develop and execute co-creative solutions to strategic challenges of all kinds. Whether leading strategy, innovation and change initiatives, or empowering teams with the skills and tools to keep pace with accelerated change and increased complexity, Matt develops and delivers hands-on, human-centered, co-creative, and visually driven tools and methodologies that increase clarity and enable teams to generate results, faster.

Matt’s clients have included: American Express, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Elsevier, Intel, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nike, OECD, Oracle, RackSpace, Red Bull, UNESCO, and VF Corporation.

www.territory.co
www.workforward.co
www.theartofopportunity.net

ANDY ANDREWS

Topic:  Strategy in Permanent White Water

Andy Andrews BCom, MBA, PhD  is an academic and consultant with teaching and consulting experience in the USA, Europe, Africa, India and Asia. Formerly Dean at two of South Africa’s leading Business Schools he has also served on the Boards of several major South African companies.

www.linkedin.com/in/andy-andrews-569263

CHRIS PARKER

Topics: Safely Self-Managing
Simplify To Accelerate

Chris creates experiences that enable growth!  His expertise is at the intersection of technology driven productivity and customer experience strategy.  His current passion is sharing the Simple Business Canvas with the world through his coaching brand – Ebullient.com. He has held positions such as CIO of multinational financial services and Managing Director of IT services companies.  He has an MBA from Universiteit Nyenrode (which included a module at the University of Stellenbosch) and is an Ambassador for OpenExO – a global community of exponential innovators.

www.ebullient.com

HELEN PENTZ

Topic:  Effective teams (and why change management is changing)

Helen is a project manager and businesswoman who loves making things happen but knows true success is founded on people first. Experienced in establishing and leading programmes of work as well as directing operational practices and delivery, she works with leadership and teams to facilitate the design and execution of business transformation journeys.

She has sixteen years’ experience in multi-faceted project- and program management, business analysis and management consulting, thereafter having established and directed a group of professional services businesses for over a decade. Her company, Solfeggio, brings together a strong network of professionals specialising in a range of key disciplines focused on enhancing organisational effectiveness, agility and vitality, as well as providing freelance and part-time resourcing services in selected business and IT competencies.

Helen holds a B.Comm and MBA, and various other business management and IT-related certifications, and is energised by the mechanics and dynamics of how we get things done, and more excited by the dramatically changing role of leadership in the modern organisation.

www.helenpentz.com

MOIRA VALLET

Topic : Emotional self-awareness for effective leadership

Moira Vallet is a registered psychometrist in independent practice (with the Health Professions Council of South Africa, PMT 0021199). She holds a BA Hons (Psych) degree from UNISA.

Moira has focused her life goals on facilitating employee and leadership self-improvement and is passionate about assisting others achieve optimal emotional health.

She is accredited in assessment tests related to emotional intelligence, personality and leadership.

www.linkedin.com/in/moira-vallet-0460b312

VERA KRIEL

Topic: The holistic view of the organisation

A strategy and business advisor with more than 25 years’ experience in private, public and entrepreneurial organisations for clients in over 20 countries. Dedicated to sustainability, empowerment and transformation. Advisory Board member for the Department of Management of University of Johannesburg, panellist for Woman in Leadership by Nelson Mandela Foundation and thinktank member on entrepreneurship for Dr Maponya Institute of Entrepreneurship.

Previous winner of the Businesswomen of the year award from the SA Council for Businesswoman and semi-finalist of Most Influential Women in Business and Government awards by CEO Magazine. Currently busy with her PhD focussing on development of methods and tools to assist businesses with strategy and operating models in the highly connected and digitalised world.

www.linkedin.com/in/verakriel

MARTIN COLLINSON

Topic: What’s normal anyway?
Agile Business Models and Cultural underpinning

Martin is an expert on leadership. For the last 25 years he has coached business leaders and executive teams across Europe and in the US, and also in Asia and South America. He began his own career as a leader in 1985, when he was asked to head up L&D for a national high street business in the UK, where he designed and implemented a new approach to identifying and developing people with high potential. He went on to lead OD and L&D with a global aerospace and automotive systems manufacturer, where he redesigned the L&D function and implemented a global approach to Talent Management.  Since becoming an independent consultant in 1992, Martin has worked with the MDs, CEOs and executive team members of numerous global companies.

In 2018 Martin acted as the catalyst that brought Enabling Talent into existence. ET is a consultancy formed entirely of independent experts who have diverse perspectives and areas of expertise, but who share the same values and who work with global business leaders to co-create solutions to their emerging challenges.

Martin is currently writing a series of articles about leadership and the role of HR in achieving sustainable competitive advantage through people.

www.enablingtalent.com

DR. RYK CROUKAMP

Topic: Re-igniting your employees post crisis

Ryk is the CEO of Human Factor Dynamix, a niche consultancy specialising in uncovering the hidden potential in the strategies, people, processes, and systems of businesses. Once found, they ignite this potential with a powerful and systemic approach, to identify and deliver change with measurable business benefits. This approach is anchored in the fundamental belief in the infinite capability of human beings.

Ryk is renowned as a deep specialist with an ability to translate his knowledge of organisational culture and climate into business results, proven through his organisational development and leadership skills in global corporates.

He has led various successful major transformation programs in three continents and has done extensive leadership development work in the Middle East, Europe and the USA.  His range of experience in organisational development work spans the following industries: Oil and gas, petrochemicals, special risk insurance, emergency medicine, mining, electricity, airlines, and telecommunications on three continents.

Ryk holds a PhD in the behavioral sciences and as a qualified associate logo therapist, his approach to the world of work has been deeply influenced by his global experiences.

As an avid adventurer with a successful summit bid in the high Himalayas, Ryk’s mountaineering experiences, supported by his training, shaped his approach and passion for transformation at personal and organisational levels.

www.hfdynamix.com

ALICE VAN DEN BERG

Topic: New business models, and new perspectives

Alice boasts a corporate career spanning 27 years.  Starting as a functional software consultant, she progressed into management consulting specializing in change management, transformation and program management, subsequently moving to Singapore in 2011 to pursue a regional role (South East Asia) with Accenture.  The role exposed her to working Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia, The Netherlands, Hong Kong, Thailand, China, Australia and Taiwan, and she is currently based in the Netherlands with Philips Innovation Services after 7 years in Asia.

As the previous founder of a boutique consulting company in South Africa, she understands business operations and the need for innovation in products, services solutions, process and especially business models.  Her core expertise is centred on developing and managing the innovation process to solve real business issues to meet customer needs (using  Design Thinking, Blue Ocean Strategy, and related approaches.).  She has a particular interest in overcoming the challenges to operationalizing innovation (i.e. servitisation) in companies.

Alice’s industry experience covers Medical, Oil and Gas, Banking, Insurance, Mining and Manufacturing.   She holds a BA Industrial Psychology (Hons), MBA from GIBS business school, and Master in Business innovation from Deusto and Cambridge universities.  Her MBI Thesis topic addressed ‘The determinants of servitisation in a manufacturing company where digital technologies were successfully adopted in the value chain’.

www.linkedin.com/in/alice-van-den-berg-ba5b2a3

ELI GOLDSTEIN

Topic: Communication channels for alignment, collaboration and feedback

Eli is founder and managing partner of Customaline (Proprietary) Ltd, a company specializing in providing services to help clients align their businesses with their customers’ true needs and required outcomes.

Having worked closely with global experts in relation to excellence in the achievement of customer satisfaction (such as Robin Lawton author of  “Mastering Excellence-A Leaders’ Guide to Aligning Strategy, Culture, Customer Experience and Measures of Success”) Eli is eminently qualified to provide a unique blend of thought leadership to C-Suite executives in ensuring that Customer Experience and Service Excellence programmes are successful and sustainable.

Eli is a member of the Global CXPanel ( http://globalcxpanel.com/) giving him access to leading experts in CX in the USA and Europe and serves as an advisory consultant to the Customer Relationship Management Academy of Asia – (http://www.crmasia.org/advisory/eli-d-goldstein ) He is also involved in the CX Institute project initiation in South Africa.

His strong marketing background includes experience in digital marketing, customer relationship and strategic planning especially with winning executive involvement for programs. He worked for IBM for 10 years and his ICT and customer management experience span more than 39 years providing him with broad executive level technology knowledge related to information and communication technology with emphasis on CRM and CX.

Eli has provided organizations such as Coats, European Union, Siemens, Standard Bank, Masterfoods and Reckitt Benckiser with both strategic and tactical advice in their customer and business journeys. He has worked with several companies across industries such as Agribusiness, Financial Services, Retail and Distribution, CPG, Telecommunications, Healthcare, Government and Law Firms. His ability to balance the factors of people, processes, technology and knowledge allows him to provide a visionary approach to projects related to the customer.

www.customaline.com

DOUG EATWELL

Topic: The impact of organizational culture on successful strategy implementation

Doug has over three decades of experience in market research, industry analysis and strategic consulting. He established and ran his own research agency for 19 years, specializing in Customer Experience measurement. Over the course of his career, he has executed hundreds of engagements for many well-known companies, including a number of major multinationals. Considered by his peers to be a world-class CX specialist, Doug enjoys finding ways to help executives make sense of the complex behavioural and attitudinal aspects of their business environments. He holds an undergraduate degree in electronics engineering from the University of the Witwatersrand and a master’s degree in business administration from Wits Business School.

www.linkedin.com/in/dougeatwell