Our Home Office
The Neville Freeman Agency works with Australian businesses and organisations to help them clarify issues in their strategic management.
Frequently this work involves developing customised scenarios, although we also use a variety of other modes of strategic enquiry, such as critical conversations and systemic approaches to all aspects of organisational development. Through mentoring we help CEO's and senior executives develop the 'unwritten' and 'non-technical' skills required for successful business life.
We are well known for the creation of powerful and diverse intellectual resources to help organisations identify their strategic goals and then develop ways to meet them. This requires both skilful project design and the ability to select and source the right people for the job.
An important aim in these projects is for the organisation itself to assimilate these adaptive learning approaches to strategy-making.
The Times They Are A-Changing
No organisation is immune to the forces that are transforming our world; every organisation can and must evolve.
Today, to evolve means to devolve power to the networks; to devolve we must involve more ideas and more people at all levels in strategy, innovation and value creation.
Organisations need to develop resilience in turbulent times. Foresight provides the tools to build resilience which - in turn - makes the pathways to sustainability so much easier to find.
Scenarios: What's The Story?
The major benefit of scenario planning is to improve the quality of thinking which leads to strategic decision. It does this by building stories about different possible futures which, themselves, flow from a deep understanding of the uncertainties which are shaping our world.
Scenarios are, thus, particularly helpful in the current environment of accelerating, rapid change brought about by revolutionary breakthroughs in communications, biotechnology, globalisation and a host of new environmental paradigms.
Our scenario building approach investigates major change factors, such as emergent and breakthrough technology, policy intentions and market forces and then develops scenario stories by identifying the way key uncertainties interact in a systemic context.
The scenarios reveal a variety of surprise elements from outside the organisation's usual frame of reference, unexpected interactive dynamics of identified trends, the sequencing of anticipated events and areas of hidden risk. Once painted, the scenario landscape can be used to test the robustness of proposed strategies and policies, and to design alternative approaches that would be more resilient to future changes. Scenarios are useful for resolving conflicting features of the strategic landscape.
In addition, scenarios involve many people in understanding the future operating climate for the organisation, and in creating suitable strategies and initiatives for the future. Through scenarios the organisation can facilitate an ongoing strategic conversation that supports effective growth and change.
The learning and scenario building exercise is helpful in that it may:
deliver a better understanding of supply-side considerations, including a deeper and more diverse understanding of new technologies that may 'impact' on what we do and offer competitive advantage into the future;
deliver a better understanding of the social, economic and environmental parameters in which businesses and organisations have to operate into the future;
deliver an understanding of how competitors at local, national, regional and global levels may develop and respond into the future; improve understanding of the value chain;
help identify areas of focus and improve the thinking on assumptions, and their systemic links, for subsequent quantitative and qualitative modeling;
produce a blanket understanding and a concordant set of strategies for future directions;
and, produce a common 'metaphorical' language as the platform for on-going strategic conversation.
The Rogues Gallery — the Neville Freeman frontline
Richard Neville
Author, social commentator, futurist, stirrer, bush-walker, Director and Cofounder of the Neville Freeman Agency.
Oliver Freeman
Director and Co-founder of the Neville Freeman Agency with vast experience in futures and a history in publishing.
Richard Bawden AM
Adjunct Professor at Michigan State University and Emeritus Professor at the University of Western Sydney.
Alexandra Berthold
Designer and production editor with over 10 years experience with scenario reports and foresight newsletters.
Andrew Campion
Futures consultant and economist with an interest in new technologies and youth markets. Our chief researcher.
James Cowan
Author.
Howard Dare
Teacher, international businessman and academic leader with global experience through public and private sectors.
Ian Dunlop
Ian has wide experience in energy, infrastructure, and international business, after years with Shell. He worked at senior level in oil, gas and coal production, long-term energy, competition reform and privatization.
Anita Kelleher
Foresight consultant based in Perth with extensive experience in public sector work.
Michael Killalea
Leading Sydney design and graphics practitioner with special skills in books and reports.
Greg Rippon
Works with NFA on many projects with expertise in technology, strategic planning and futuring projects and a strong commercial acumen
Richard Watson
Co-founder of Futures House Europe and founder of the What's Next website that documents new ideas and trends. Writer with special skills in scenario building. Co-author, with Oliver Freeman, of Future Vision: Scenarios for the World in 2040.
Melanie Williams
Specialist in educational design involving the development and evaluation of professional development programs for teachers and trainers. Scenario specialist.
Andrew Crosthwaite
Co-founder of Futures House Europe. Andrew studied English Language and
Literature at Oxford and is a planner and strategist with over 20 years¹
experience. His long-term background was in communication and he is the
former Head of Planning of Euro RSCG London, one of Europe¹s largest
communication groups.
Andrew has worked with, amongst others: Toyota, Lexus, Virgin Atlantic,
Red Bull, HSBC, the Ordnance Survey, Associated Newspapers and H M Government.
The Neville Freeman Agency Pty Ltd
PO Box 635
Balmain NSW 2041
Australia
Managing Director: Oliver Freeman
+61 (0)419 231 197