Family Business Institute Founders’ profiles

Jon Kenfield and Ross Anderson are FBI’s Founders.

jonJon Kenfield

LLB CA FFBI FIAMA MBO

Founder, Chair, Fellow & Faculty Member of FBI
Solutionist & Accredited Family Business Adviser
Facilitator, Mediator & Author

 

 

Jon is FBI’s originator and Founding Chair.  He’s the world’s first Master Solutionist for Family Business, having developed the concept of Solutionism (the professional practice of solving other people’s and organisation’s problems) over 20 years ago.

Jon has an honours degree in law and has been a chartered accountant for over 30 years. He’s been a partner/principal/director in three chartered firms, including two of the “Big 4”. He’s also a Commercial Arbitrator (grade 1); Advanced Mediator and Conciliator; English teacher; and was a professional SCUBA diving instructor and commercial oil rig diver (long ago!).

As a Solutionist and Mediator he helps business families to resolve their conflicts, overcome challenges, and generate more clarity, focus, alignment and commitment to the things that really matter to them: their personal, family and business needs.

His book, “The Solutionist Guide to Family Business” (350 pages), is the definitive Australian text for business families on “how to get things right, and keep them right in the family AND the business”.

He believes that his self-awarded MBO (“Master of the Bleeding Obvious”) gets a big workout on most family business assignments.

Jon says, “I developed Solutionism to provide my clients with the processes and outcomes they kept telling me they were looking for, and not getting, from other advisers: practical and sensitive solutions that wouldn’t break individuals and families, wouldn’t cause more pain, and wouldn’t cost enormous amounts of money. They clearly wanted a more genuinely client-centric focus and a greater willingness by their advisers to work with complementary professionals – neither of which were being seriously encouraged by their existing advisers.”

He researched, developed, tested and refined his own comprehensive family business best practice process model to address those client needs, and has been successfully using it with real clients, for many years. Jon has been sharing his ideas, methodologies and techniques with other advisers (both human and commercial / technical) for over 20 years, through ad hoc training and collaborative advisory assignments. So FBI is just a natural, and very exciting, progression.

rossRoss Anderson

Career Summary

Ross Anderson is an Adviser, Executive Coach and experienced Designer, Developer and Facilitator of development initiatives for a broad range of Family, SME, Public and Private sector organisations.

Ross began his career as a consulting psychologist where he became a leader in the field of trauma management and crisis response. He developed highly advanced skills working with the armed forces, emergency services, large organisations, and primary and secondary victims.

As a former Director of Melbourne Business School’s Mt Eliza Executive Education Program he had responsibility for driving major public sector projects in Australia and around the Pacific region.  A particular area of focus was managing large complex change initiatives in Defence, Health and Utilities.  He was also responsible for leading a major global change project with BHP Billiton.

As an Executive Coach Ross combines his rich background as a practicing psychologist with highly developed skills in using standardised personality profiling assessment tools to achieve extraordinary results amongst individuals and teams.

Ross has a special interest in developing peak performance in teams (including family teams), and in managing work and whole of life balance, increasing emotional resilience and helping individuals to develop a sense of focus and motivation.

Qualifications

Graduate Diploma (Educational Counselling) (RMIT), Bachelor of Science (Psych) (Melbourne), Diploma of Clinical Hypnosis (Aust. Society of Hypnosis), Executive Diploma (Business Coaching) (NBIA), Diploma of Training & Assessment Systems (ANTA)

Accreditations / Certification

Australian Federal Police Security Clearance

Hogan suite, MBTI, LSI, OCI & OEI, TAIS, Voices, IEIL, Foresight, FIRO-B, California Psychological Inventory (CPI™ 434 / CPI 260®), Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode, Conflict Dynamics Profile (Eckerd College), BarOn EQ-i® / EQ-360™, MMPI,  and 16PF®.

Advisory Services – Areas of Specialisation and Competence

Family

  • Conflict Resolution
  • Culture Change
  • Group Dynamics & Emotional Issues
  • Plans
  • Structures & Systems
  • Succession
  • Workshops (design and facilitate)
Business

  • Coaching & Mentoring
  • Conflict Resolution & Mediation
  • Education & Development
  • Emotional Resilience
  • Facilitation
  • Organisational Change
  • Performance Management
  • Psychological / Human Services
  • Team Building 

 

Examples of Expertise and Experience

  • Works with business families during succession processes / generational change; helps to resolve conflict and communication difficulties; and builds leadership and management capabilities.
  • Led the team tasked with designing and developing leadership programs to support Defence Materiel Organisations’ very significant change agenda and accompanying leadership requirements. Also designed and delivered various:  team development, change management, high potential candidate and internal coaching and mentoring programs to complement Defence’s leadership agenda.   Facilitated numerous development centre programs.
  • Conducted a large scale assignment to assess the top talent of Airservices Australia.
  • Ddesigned and facilitated numerous management programs and executive coaching assignments to build individual and organisational capability.
  • Designed and delivered a talent management program for Melbourne Water, culminating in a one year development initiative including training in team work, emotional intelligence, advanced communication and conflict management. The program included mentoring, coaching and action learning projects.
  • Led a team for SA Health to design a leadership capability framework and 360 degree tool to measure those leadership characteristics necessary to transform the organisation.
  • Designed and delivered a suite of interventions to executive and clinical leaders and emerging leaders in the topic areas of leadership, change management, communication, conflict management, performance feedback, team development and emotional intelligence.
  • Designed and implemented Learning Circles for the executive of the Australian Federal Police.
  • Provided consulting services to the armed and emergency services following conflict and crisis.