Giles Dutfield

The work you undertook for us at HMP Swinfen Hall kick started our programme of change and created a solid foundation on which to build. The images and words won the hearts and minds of staff, helping to make it a safe environment on which to build sound staff/prisoner relationships and at the same time sending  clear and positive messages to families, external agencies and the public.Working with you was inspirational for me, your vision and energy made what seemed difficult and complex, easy and fun. You made a significant contribution and I will always be grateful for that.

Thank you for your time and expertise to work alongside our team to deliver such an exceptional document.

Our Board, staff and supporters have all commented on what a professional and engaging report it is. You took the time to truly understand the complex services we provide at Anglicare WA and present the powerful stories of our employees and clients clearly with respect and dignity… we're delighted with the result.

May I take the opportunity to thank you for all your hard work, support and assistance in producing some excellent materials for the NOMS High Security prisons to strengthen our drug supply reduction campaign. I am particularly grateful for the creativity with which you approached the project and the rapid turn around time to produce such quality products.

The materials have been received at each High Security prison and feedback from all of the Governors is very positive indeed.

Initial feedback from the Who’s The Loser? poster campaign is that they are very strong, with very high impact imagery. Staff have applauded the designs stating it's about time we used blunt direct messages!

‘I'm three quarters of the way through my first set of establishment visits, assessing the impact and use of the current Who’s The Loser? campaign material. We've had some very interesting results and feedback as to which of the posters in particular are most effective or are having the biggest impact.

They certainly pack a punch!’

Nothing is ever too much trouble for the team at GDA, whatever our needs they do everything to meet them within any given budget. Their strong design style and communication skills give them a great understanding of our marketing needs as a Housing Association.

We were very, very impressed with the newsletters, strategic documentation and loved the way you worked, thanks…

We were able to draw on GDA’s experience to develop innovative ideas communicating key messages to a variety of operational stakeholders to help achieve our business unit targets.

We had never produced filmed media to this extent before. In our efforts to capture the benefits of AimHigher and teenage engagement with education the level of your service was exemplary and your expertise was invaluable throughout the process, making what was a new venture for our organisation a relatively simple one.

Giles was providing consulting support to assist me develop a case for a new business unit. We began by kicking my idea around a bit to enable Giles to get into my head. He conducted an analysis and asked all the right questions and in just the right way to really steer my thinking and help me to clarify what I was proposing.

When Giles talks to you he talks with you, not at you or to you, and his gentle questioning guides your thinking and allows you to form new ideas in your head. Just through conversation he takes you far beyond what you thought before and lifts your ideas to a new level. As we worked together Giles made sense of my idea. He made links to experience he has both in my industry and in the business world and gave sense to what I was thinking and a focus to where I wanted to take it. He gave my idea the eloquence and business clarity it needed.

He got into the fabric of the project and helped me shape it and change it and give it direction without losing the essence of what it was about. I’m very grateful for that. Giles found the framework and gave me the space to form the idea so it was still mine.

Giles gave me the confidence and back up I needed to create and present a winning presentation. It was all done at a distance. With the way Giles works and thinks he can be equally effective at a distance as he is face-to-face.

Working with Giles you can sense that he has an ability to address what a target audience need to hear, what they are looking for and what is attractive to them. He’s a very astute businessman and with his questions he leads you along a path, not where he wants to go, but where you need to go yourself.

He is very honest and straightforward, what you see is what you get but it’s not until you start to talk to him that you realise exactly how powerful that is.

I approached Giles with an idea, a basic framework for a new service proposal. Together we discussed how to develop the idea, he is very skilled at asking the right questions to get you thinking in ways you didn’t consider before. He gave the idea the practical, humanistic padding it needed to enable me to see how it would come together as a living proposal and helped bring my business proposition come to life.

Because Giles understands our business and the wider market place, in pitching my idea to him, he immediately understood what I was hoping to achieve and was aiming at.

It’s important in our field that you understand the market place. Giles’ experience in the custodial sector and in the private sector as whole gave him the knowledge he needed to offer me valuable input into the viability of my proposal. He helped me to look at other avenues that could be included so that we grew my idea into something that could be applied in any service delivery arena as a practical application.

both confidence in what you are delivering and the confidence in you to deliver it. And that gives you confidence to do things you never would have thought possible. He’s very laid back and makes a painful process a lot easier.

In our business today it is all about coming up with new ideas and doing things better. If you get it right then you are unstoppable and Giles gave me the strength to get it right and make a great impact. I presented to the senior executives of a global company, they understood my idea and said ‘wow’. My initial idea was good but I wouldn’t have got there without his support and guidance.

Working with Giles enables you to work and think in areas and ways that you’ve never done before. He does it all so innocuously and catches you by surprise. It was very positive and invigorative to work with someone so enthusiastic about what they do and engaging in how they deliver it. I enjoyed it very much.

I’m on the plane back home and just read your incredible newsletter…

It’s probably the best internal employee newsletter I’ve seen because it:

• Genuinely thanks employees for their efforts in creating the success of the previous year

• Tells employees that their views count by connecting Health and Safety with a concern for individual’s well-being and by actively seeking employee views - “If you have any ideas for new ventures don’t keep them to yourself… you don’t have to have a fully formed plan or how this will work… and don’t be put off when we start to ask a few questions!”

• Shows employees how they are collectively undertaking meaningful work via stories that illustrate positive client outcomes

• Gives people a heads up around potential changes

• Shows people how they are making a difference to the local community.

Outcare, like many ‘traditional’ NFP agencies had enjoyed years of benevolent funding grants with little accountability in the truest sense. Evidencing outcomes was unheard off and contracts tended to be judged on outputs. The organisation was in need of modernisation. GDA provided a much needed analysis of the market forces, and helped shape a longer term strategy for the need for change.

GDA are an organisation who genuinely want you to succeed and achieve as a customer. They bring a can-do attitude and are prepared to be patient, flexible, and bring immense added value to any business. They get you to be self-sufficient and don’t simply come in to your business, undertake work and then walk away.

They bring their expertise to help us in a way that makes sense for staff and gives reassurance to funders, and stakeholders. This is all done through tangible products; newsletters, annual reports and our website and new intranet.

GDA recognised early on in our engagement that unless we captured staff input and views and they were given a context and understanding for the organisational change, they would be resistant and this would become a major obstacle.

Having an Open Space event where the whole staff group had their say about the good, bad and all, of Outcare, enabled me as CEO to listen to them, give a message of how important their engagement is, and then drive the necessary changes through an agenda to which they co-contributed.

Having a well-developed marketing strategy which makes sense to the Board and staff, has been significant in supporting me as the CEO to drive a change which has been much needed.

Because they provide services across strategy, communication and media delivery you get the ‘full package’ from a top marketing expertise perspective.  This is invaluable in the current NFP environment in Australia. 

Additionally GDA brings ideas on how to use the latest media/technology to evidence that we are a learning organisation that delivers because we understand how to measure performance outcomes, and communicate that. With GDA Outcare have created a culture of expectation and creditability both in and outside of the business.

GDA are an organisation who genuinely want you to succeed and achieve as a customer. They bring a can-do attitude and are prepared to be patient, flexible, and bring immense added value to any business. They get you to be self-sufficient and don’t simply come in to your business, undertake work and then walk away. Their support is excellent!

You examined the aspirations and goals of the group and developed a visionary model that defines Aboriginal land based business enterprise development within a framework of culturally appropriate decision making and behaviours.

Great work! 

The work Push has done to this point has helped us gain confidence in the direction we need to go. We need input from everyone, it’s a collaborative approach - not only from within the business but people external to the business. Today’s brand strategy workshop has been absolutely priceless.

What I gathered that is we have our own perception of what our product is to us but what Push helped us with is to better understand what our product means to other people.

I think we found what we’re looking for, now we can actually put that down and bring it to market with a clear message.

We've found what we're looking for and now we can actually put that down and bring it to market with a clear message.

Though the outcome of the auction is not yet clear in terms of appointment of preferred bidder. I think it would be accurate to say, two bidders remain in contention at this point and we are one of those. In terms of quality, we achieved the highest qualitative score (potentially by some distance) which we were delighted about.

Not only does your well-communicated assessment provide clarity to the group, I think it’s really useful feedback for the collective to understand what the road ahead looks like and how their investment into the NLE will return a dividend.

Just want to offer my compliments on these fantastic shots, they are really beautiful and capture both the indoor and outdoor action beautifully. We’re so grateful for your offer to share them with us with appropriate acknowledgement.

Giles, importantly identified the importance of this project, aligning with Noongar Land Enterprise Group’s core values, that cultural knowledge and Intellectual Property are critical considerations in the Bush Food Industry. The proposal was important to secure Federal Government funding through FIAL and Giles described the project potential of developing an Indigenous led, Australia Bush Food Industry which can;

1. Identify, implement and model the appropriate cultural and ethical protocols necessary for Aboriginal Law and Australian Law to co-exist reciprocally to mutual benefit

2. Support Aboriginal communities to achieve the economic, health and environmental benefits of a sustainable bush foods enterprises

Push Consult provide tremendous support to any community service organisation. They have helped Down Syndrome WA develop our strategic plan and obtain new funding through competitive tender processes. We are also working with them to create web-apps. They really do understand how to develop innovative service ideas and communicate them effectively to our diverse stakeholder group.

…the app has gone from being seen as an electronic paperwork shortcut to being a powerful resource for released offenders. This gives it greater longevity and enabled it to engage with offenders at a far deeper level creating a win-win situation for all concerned.

Push Consulting bring unique insights and expertise to the social services sector. Their experience in working on both sides of the fence (government and community sectors) has proven tremendously helpful to strategy planning, forming partnerships and developing compelling business cases for our services.

Push Consulting added a level of sophistication to the EOI documentation that we couldn’t deliver internally. Complex detail was translated into easily understandable and visual models, making it easy for the reader to understand key concepts and how they would work.

Push Consulting have enormous experience in developing bid strategies. Shawn's knowledge of the sector, the bid requirements and the ability to bring together a range of partners to develop a credible model was invaluable. Their understanding of collaborative working and how best this can be achieved to deliver tenant outcomes was key to developing the detail of the EOI. The resulting model was a key factor in the success of the bid.

Thanks for your help with this business case proposal, it looks great. The meeting with BBC Commercial Policy was great and we passed that hurdle – I now have to meet with BBC Procurement and Editorial Policy before we go to the Head of FM&T.

Thanks for the team workshop last week which everyone really enjoyed. This whole process is really useful for us to help us pinpoint the best areas in which to target our limited resources.

It has been a real pleasure working with GDA over the years… right from that first meeting in Lowdham, achieving our drug use reduction targets . I feel that many of the great initiatives I have been involved in over the years have succeeded due to your support.

People spend so much time on their computers that I wanted something that would keep OSH fresh. I wanted something that would make people say, "Oh yeah - I get it" rather than just give another standard "in your face message". The screensavers were just subtle yet effective - perfect for what I wanted.

I'm trying to raise the profile of the area within the prison and staff were exasperated that no one cared, the reps were frustrated that the tasks they being given weren't OSH related so things weren't changing. Now things are changing. People are standing up and thinking first. We have put OSH at the forefront of people's minds and are keeping the momentum going.

The screen savers keep it fresh and keep it real. They were exactly what I wanted and it was a very smooth process. GDA understood exactly what we wanted - they are just perfect."

Thank you for all the work you have done for us in this matter.  We greatly appreciate it.