Alistair Mant is non-executive chairman of Performance1

He is an international authority on leadership development and executive talent identification. He is Chairman of the UK-based Socio-Technical Strategy Group – a brokerage for carrying out studies of system function and dysfunction. The Group’s work rests mainly on socio-technical systems theory. This concerns the natural properties of complex organisational and political systems at the point where operations and human nature interact – where expensive and embarrassing cockups and blunders occur.

Alistair was born in Australia and spends a third of each year working with private and public sector clients in Australasia. He appears regularly on the conference circuit, dealing with leadership, systems thinking, modernisation of government (implementing “joined-up” thinking), private/public sector relationships, organisation structure and the strategic aspects of human resource management and development. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

His books include The Experienced Manager (which won the Institute of Management’s “Bowie Medal”), The Rise & Fall of the British Manager, Bismarck to Bullock – Conversations about Political & Industrial Contrasts in Britain & Germany, The Dynamics of Management Education, and Leaders We Deserve. His book Intelligent Leadership was published in Australia in 1997 and was an international best-seller.

He has a global portfolio of executive role coaching clients and is a member of the Global Coaching Partnership.  As executive coach, he has a special practice in the public/private grey area (values-driven companies and businesslike government). He is also the Strategy Advisor to the Employers’ Forum on Disability – the leading European body driving systemic change in the provision of real employment and facilities for disabled people.

His background includes business experience, mainly in the IBM Corporation, consultancy (specialising in very complex systems such as government, health and transportation), research (Senior Social Scientist at the Tavistock Institute in London) and acadaemia (Visiting Fellow at Manchester Business School and Dean of Faculty at the South Bank University in London). His first real job was as a humble 19-year old fitter’s mate on the Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme in Australia.

He is married to a developmental psychologist and lives in Sussex. His two daughters work in the fields which represent his main recreational passions – music and the theatre.

A selection of Alistair's writings and articles are available on our articles page. Click here to go there.