ABOUT

The high school failure who became a professor

My purpose in life is to leverage my knowledge and creativity to empower and inspire others. I aim to help individuals and organizations navigate complex challenges through my leadership and coaching. I value rational thought, and evidence-based decision-making, and am driven by a pursuit of happiness, both for myself and others.

Looking back, Clive’s adult life started with a wicked problem: he failed high school.

Clive’s plans of studying geography or oceanography at a top university were torn-up in the space of three letters printed on his high school examination results: “D E O” (D and E explain themselves. “O” signifies he didn't even make it to the advanced grades, and was the shape his mouth made when reading said results).

Clive became and remains a serial student, having spectacularly blotted his copybook. This culminated in a PhD in, ironically, operational risk management, and later in a research fellowship at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Not bad for a high school drop-kick.

Clive has practised and researched leadership, management and business for over 30 years, working with some of the biggest and smallest brands in the world. Clive couples that deep expertise with an earlier career in artificial intelligence, where he applied machine learning to wicked problems (for example, tomato plant disease diagnosis, adaptive battlefield technology, and gas well analysis). This is what provides the power base for his mentoring, writing and speaking.

Convinced of the power of learning and development for personal, professional and business growth, Clive specialises in the personal and professional development of leaders, founders and entrepreneurs, as well as strategic business model innovation.

He brings clarity, insight, and good humour to his work.

What Sets Clive Apart?

  • 30 years of research, education, and mentoring in leadership, management, business and risk and crisis management

  • Honours degree with a climatology specialism (now there is a wicked problem!)

  • Masters degree in AI (ill-structured problem-solving)

  • Masters degree in Management Development

  • Ph.D. in operational risk management

  • Taught strategy on the Cambridge MBA

  • Trained in negotiation at Harvard

  • Trained in positive psychology with the University of California, Berkley

  • Trained in design thinking with IDEO

  • Worked with major brands in taming wicked problems (eg, GEC (now Ericsson and Siemens), Centrica, Avivia, Ford, Coca Cola)

AWARDS

  • Willis Teaching Fellow, University of Bradford Management Centre

  • James Tye/British Safety Council Research Fellow, Judge Business School and Isaac Newton Trust Teaching Fellow, Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge

ASSOCIATIONS

Graduate member, GAICD