Creative Good - Phil Terry

I spend my workdays thinking about customer experience and about how executives can help each other and I spend my evenings thinking about how adults and young people can learn and see in new ways. Projects include the private peer-to-peer helping and learning network for executives, The Councils, customer experience consulting at Creative Good, phone-based peer-facilitated reading groups at The Reading Odyssey and creative thinking at the Gel conference.

The Harvard Business Review is publishing a case study I've written on the importance of asking for help from peers. I'll publish the link to that in March 2009.

Creative Good has worked with more than 500 consulting clients in the last decade and we are working on some interesting new services for this challenging economy. One new area of work will be in social media. I recently started a Facebook group to celebrate Darwin's 200th birthday, which gathered 220,000 people and some of the world's leading scientists in 14 days. The lessons from this work combined with what we've learned building the Councils community and the Reading Odyssey is leading to a new practice area for clients.

At Creative Good since early 1999, I joined the firm from McKinsey & Co. I got my MBA from the Harvard Business School, where I was a Kauffman Fellow, graduated with academic honors and the Dean's Award for bringing MBA students from around the world together to collaborate and learn from each other.

I do a lot of public speaking and have keynoted more than 150 conferences and private events. I have reduced my speaking schedule to focus on my business - but am still open to giving talks if the time and place are right.

My current speeches include:

• The top 10 lessons customer-centric leaders need to learn from Warren Buffett
• The mathematics of hospitality and customer experience
• Why asking for help changes everything
• Leadership lessons from Thucydides and Herodotus
• Numeracy - or how learning basic math and probability can make you a much better leader and decison-maker

I gave the "top 10 lessons" talk at the Council meetings in October 2009, where it was very well received by the hundreds of Councils and have since given it to management at Fidelity (where the video has been shown more than 500 times around the company), and start- ups like Constant Contact. It's a speech designed to acknowledge the difficult we are in and to inspire employees to use this moment in creative ways.

The mathematics of hospitality speech, which combines the insights of New York restaurateur Danny Meyer with important lessons from probability theory, has been well received at some of New York's top restaurants (where I've delivered it to the whole restaurant team) as well as at corporate conferences.

I have spoken to audiences as large as 10,000 and as small as 10. The bigger the audience, the better. Why? There is more energy in the room for me to work with.

I myself am a member of a number of peer learning groups. In addition to the reading groups that I run and also a member of, I'm a member of the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO), my own small CEO council, and a council of value investors that I set up.

I'm also committed philanthropically - having started my career in the nonprofit world, it's still where my heart is. I have sat on the Harvard Business School Fellowship Committee, am a current member the Board of Trustees of Prospect Park and have given money and time to programs like the national inner-city youth program, the All Stars Project.


Phil Terry CEO E-mail: phil at creativegood.com		I spend my workdays thinking about customer experience and about how executives can help each other and I spend my evenings thinking about how adults and young people can learn and see in new ways. Projects include the private peer-to-peer helping and learning network for executives, The Councils, customer experience consulting at Creative Good, phone-based peer-facilitated reading groups at The Reading Odyssey and creative thinking at the Gel conference. The Harvard Business Review is publishing a case study I've written on the importance of asking for help from peers. I'll publish the link to that in March 2009. Creative Good has worked with more than 500 consulting clients in the last decade and we are working on some interesting new services for this challenging economy. One new area of work will be in social media. I recently started a Facebook group to celebrate Darwin's 200th birthday, which gathered 220,000 people and some of the world's leading scientists in 14 days. The lessons from this work combined with what we've learned building the Councils community and the Reading Odyssey is leading to a new practice area for clients. At Creative Good since early 1999, I joined the firm from McKinsey & Co. I got my MBA from the Harvard Business School, where I was a Kauffman Fellow, graduated with academic honors and the Dean's Award for bringing MBA students from around the world together to collaborate and learn from each other. I do a lot of public speaking and have keynoted more than 150 conferences and private events. I have reduced my speaking schedule to focus on my business - but am still open to giving talks if the time and place are right. My current speeches include: • The top 10 lessons customer-centric leaders need to learn from Warren Buffett • The mathematics of hospitality and customer experience • Why asking for help changes everything • Leadership lessons from Thucydides and Herodotus • Numeracy - or how learning basic math and probability can make you a much better leader and decison-maker I gave the "top 10 lessons" talk at the Council meetings in October 2009, where it was very well received by the hundreds of Councils and have since given it to management at Fidelity (where the video has been shown more than 500 times around the company), and start- ups like Constant Contact. It's a speech designed to acknowledge the difficult we are in and to inspire employees to use this moment in creative ways. The mathematics of hospitality speech, which combines the insights of New York restaurateur Danny Meyer with important lessons from probability theory, has been well received at some of New York's top restaurants (where I've delivered it to the whole restaurant team) as well as at corporate conferences. I have spoken to audiences as large as 10,000 and as small as 10. The bigger the audience, the better. Why? There is more energy in the room for me to work with. I myself am a member of a number of peer learning groups. In addition to the reading groups that I run and also a member of, I'm a member of the Young Presidents' Organization (YPO), my own small CEO council, and a council of value investors that I set up. I'm also committed philanthropically - having started my career in the nonprofit world, it's still where my heart is. I have sat on the Harvard Business School Fellowship Committee, am a current member the Board of Trustees of Prospect Park and have given money and time to programs like the national inner-city youth program, the All Stars Project.