The Phrontex organization, previously trading as Kesteven and Associates, has been providing specialist management consulting and documentation services since 1989. Our focus areas are:
The development of our Phrontex product grew from our frustration, as consultants, with the continual failure of traditional documentation and knowledge management methods. Management teams would devise good solutions to their problems; but the knowledge created would progressively deteriorate, lost in a swamp of unreadable documents.
The Phrontex mission is to protect and add value to corporate knowledge.
George Kesteven is the managing director of the Phrontex organization, and its lead consultant. Since 1989 he has been providing management and documentation services to public and private organisations in Australia and overseas. He designed and managed the development of the Phrontex system.
He undertakes assignments relating to process engineering, corporate governance, and organisational knowledge. The focus of his work is on plain language and clear thinking, supported by high-quality graphic delivery.
George has formal qualifications in linguistics and theory of knowledge. His work, in the early years of his employment, included stints as a graphic artist, computer programmer, and television production manager. During the 1980s he was managing director of a Sydney-based company involved in software development, desktop publishing, and management documentation.
Tim Rosser is our Customer Success Manager. Tim has worked in various management roles (COO, CEO) and the focus has always been on core processes — improving profit.
It wasn’t until I had to implement ISO 27001 that I really started to think deeply about policies, procedures and risk. Risk, for an organisation, is anything that stops you achieving your goals. So this includes the obvious WHS, legal and cyber risks but also risks of not achieving financial targets. It’s all risk.
This is the heart of good governance. Simply write and implement the policies and procedures that reduce risk.
But it’s not simple and every dollar and day that you spend on reducing risk is one that you cannot spend on core business. Hence you need to start with essential your compliance requirements and a good risk assessment. Once you consider the likelihood and consequence of adverse incidents, you can attempt a cost-benefit analysis of mitigating them.
Lastly, having policies and procedures that never get read or updated is as good as useless. This is where the concept of a governance management system comes in. Make the information easy to find and easy to update. Allow all staff to comment, have workflow and controls on changes and notifications on stale documentation.
Keep improving and senior management will sleep better knowing the risks are understood and managed.
