Our People
TSG operates a network of experts, using carefully selected specialists to operate within a system of tight quality controls.
Once we understand the needs of a particular assignment we engage one, or some, of our experts to manage a process to deliver an optimal solution. A selection of contacts follows:
Chief Executive and Principal Consultant
Jon Kenfield LLB CA FIAMA
(Founder and Chief Executive)
Principal Facilitator, Dispute Resolver, Problem Solver and Conflict Systems Consultant.
Jon Kenfield LLB CA CPA FIAMA MBO
Founder, CEO and Master Solutionist
Jon is the Founder and CEO of The Solutionist Group and the principal designer of the Solutionism concept (trademark pending). He is our lead dispute resolver (for Dispute Solutions) and our Master Solutionist (for Solutioneering International). From a former life he is also the Principal of 'Jon Kenfield, Forensic Accountant' - a specialist forensic accounting practice based in Melbourne.
Jon gained an LLB (Hons) in the UK. He is a chartered accountant and a CPA; a Grade 2 Commercial Arbitrator and an Advanced Mediator & Conciliator. He is also an accredited Family Business Adviser.
Jon is currently the Chair of LEADR Victoria and is a member of the Victorian State Executives of the Institute of Arbitrators & Mediators Australia and Family Business Australia.
Jon is a qualified teacher and an accredited instructor in a number of outdoor pursuits (eg: scuba diving and mountaineering). He has been involved in professional training in accountancy, arbitration and mediation for over 20 years and runs workshops on topics as diverse as: strategic, business and succession planning and managing conflict in family business.
Jon has lived and sometimes worked in England, Canada, Africa, the Middle and Far East. He has been in Australia since 1985, living in Perth and Melbourne and working throughout the country.
Work Experience
After graduating from one of the UK's leading law schools with an honours degree, Jon worked as a professional diver for 4 years - first as a scuba instructor and diving safari guide in the Red Sea and then as an underwater photographer on the oil rigs of the North and Java Seas. He spent a year in London developing and promoting adventure travel, which involved going to some very exotic places and then talking and writing about them. Bored by this hum-drum existence, he then qualified as a chartered accountant.
Immediately after qualifying, Jon went to Africa with Deloittes for 2½ years (Zambia and Zimbabwe) before migrating to Australia in 1985 and settling in Perth.
Jon established a Legal Support Group (forensic accounting) for Deloittes - just in time to catch the big corporate collapses of the late 1980s. Increasingly, his experiences with major fraud enquiries and civil litigation matters compelled him to question the received wisdoms of conventional professional practice.
All the lights came on for Jon at a breakfast briefing at the WA branch of the Australian Institute of Management in 1986. The guest speaker introduced the idea of using mediation to resolve business disputes - an exciting new development in commercial, professional and legal practice in the US at the time.
Jon was an instant convert - with a thirst for new knowledge and skills that has since taken him into studies of: problem solving; communication; negotiation; lateral thinking; conflict management processes and systems; strategy and business planning and the challenges of family business - to name a few!
Deloittes moved Jon to Melbourne in 1992. Two years later he established an independent, boutique dispute resolution consultancy that became Dispute Solutions in 1996, and eventually blossomed into The Solutionist Group and Solutioneering International, in 2004.
As a professional accountant and business consultant / adviser for over 25 years, (with some legal knowledge and a broad collection of other skills) Jon has been rationalising, problem solving, peacemaking and resolving disputes of most kinds for individuals, business and organisations of most types and sizes.
Professionalism
Jon takes his work very seriously, recognising that the outcomes will have profound effects on people's lives and relationships. He obtains as much personal and professional satisfaction from helping individuals to deal with their matrimonial, partnership and workplace problems and family business conflicts as he gains from working with larger clients on major commercial problems. These letter include: major corporations, banks and financial institutions, professional institutes, trade unions and government departments.
A combination of reading and research, with an increasing focus on family business problems (from very small to very large private businesses) has contributed to the formulation, and the formalisation, of Solutionism as Jon's core business concept and underlying methodology.
He is looking forward, with passion, energy and enthusiasm, to wherever this particular journey is taking him. In the expanded business that has become TSG, he is also looking forward to training and mentoring his business associates and the increasing numbers of trainees attending TSG courses.
Interests and Pastimes
Jon's many interests include reading and films. His passion (outside work and family) is currently focused on fly fishing, which he regrets having come to about 30 years later than was proper and reasonable.
Jon is working on the first of two books that he hopes to publish over the next two years. The first deals with preventing and handling conflict in family business, the second will formally introduce the world to Solutionism.