Jon StojanDespite being born in the UK, Phil Taylor has spent 42 years of his life and career in Italy, growing incredibly familiar with how businesses operate in the country. Italy has become his second home, being married to an Italian for over 30 years and gaining Italian citizenship in 2006.
Early in his career, Taylor worked for Gruppo Galgano, a major Italian consulting company, which grew his familiarity with the market. Despite being an engineer by education, he was CEO of Polimoda, one of the most prestigious fashion universities in the world, for almost eight years. Due to his expertise in building teams and organizations, Taylor led the university’s internationalization, helping it to expand its global profile and bring in students from all over the world.
According to Taylor, he got his big break in consulting by helping a client in their successful campaign to be elected rector of the University of Bologna, the Western World’s oldest university(1088). This opened various opportunities for him in the Italian university and corporate sectors, where he would train leaders, such as company presidents, CEOs, and other senior officials. From 2015 to 2023, Taylor also served as an honorary consul, working closely with the UK ambassador to Italy and the British consulate in Milan to facilitate UK-Italy trade.
Taylor shares one technique that he teaches leaders who address large audiences, as well as uses himself when invited to do keynote speeches or lectures. This is a type of mental mapping, known as mind node, where, rather than a typical mental map that resembles a hub with many spokes, it is organized vertically and is more responsive to the audience, taking into account their attention spans and real-time reactions to the speaker’s statements.
“A mind node is a vertical map that is out of sight, with various content, such as general information, case history, and percentages, that you can bring into the map, based on verbal and nonverbal feedback from the audience,” Taylor says. “In other words, I don’t go into a speech with a rigid plan of what I’m going to say, rather, it’s empathetically based on the audience’s reactions. One half of my brain’s going along with what content I want to say, while the other half is picking up on the micro signals from the audience. I ask myself: Am I going down the right path? Do they want me to talk about something else? Should we skip over this? I have on call, various visual aids like maps, slides, and videos, on the right and left-hand sides of the map. The audience can’t see this map, and I can whip up content in a flash if needed. It makes the speech extremely interactive and engaging, as well as gives me really great control.”
According to Taylor, his approach involves a model of leadership that gets built in real time, rather than being directly based on the words and teachings of a famous leader. This relates to the two main values of Phil Taylor Consulting: a near-maniacal dedication to ethics, and avoiding any arrogance or top-down approach. He believes that the former has allowed him to eclipse even much larger competitors, as well as work on more than 80 projects with one of the most famous Luxury Italian automotive brands in the world.
Meanwhile, the second value allows him to work with clients in a democratic and consensus-based manner, rather than coming in and dictating about what the client should do and how they should think. Taylor says that one of his greatest achievements is having helped modernize Italy’s university system, fostering more open communication and greater collaboration.
“It feels absolutely wonderful to be part of modernizing the university system and getting them to talk amongst themselves,” Taylor says. “This prevents my number one enemy in organizational terms, which is silos. Because at the end of the day, clients, students, professors, or whoever they are targeting will be buying the result of a collaborative process influenced by all departments or teams within an organization. Our methods are strictly horizontal and never top-down, which often reeks of arrogance. I believe a consultant has to constantly rethink and reinvent themselves, depending on who their audience is, because that’s how they can be the most effective.”