About Us
We are happy to tell you more about Argil and our skilled team!
Meet the team
Paul Blackbeard is a global management consultant, facilitator, and growth strategist with a lifelong passion for developing people, organisations, and partnerships. He has lived and worked across four continents and visited more than 80 countries, bringing a broad international perspective to complex business challenges. Paul specialises in strategy and planning, change management, and senior-level business leadership, supported by deep coaching and mentoring expertise. He has owned Argil for nearly 20 years, a consulting practice that creates a quiet, independent strategic dialogue between organisations and their key partners, enabling deeper understanding, innovation, and sustainable growth.
Paul holds a Master of Business Administration, a Bachelor of Commerce with Honours in Marketing, and is a qualified Practitioner in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and a certified personal Growth Coach. He is known for his “more with less” philosophy—helping leaders cut through noise, focus on what truly matters, and build practical pathways to long-term value. Alongside his consulting work, Paul is an elite masters athlete, ranking in the world’s top 10 across all freestyle swimming events and holding multiple world records, reflecting the discipline, resilience, and performance mindset he brings to his professional life. Through Argil, Paul partners with senior executives who want to strengthen strategic relationships, unlock new opportunities, and create enduring competitive advantage.
Learn more here about our independent executive dialogue process.
Argil™ works at a CEO/ board level and senior management to unlock business growth from your key Customers.
Most CEO’s of Business to Business companies understand the Revenue Statistic – ‘80% of our profits comes from 20% of our Customers.’
The Argil™ process injects candour into these key client relationships and conversations, lifting them through price – focused vendor and supplier levels into a value focused Partnership where it is possible to deliver impressive measurable growth to both parties.
Argil™ delivers the best results to organisations run by senior leaders who have a passion and simple understanding that – “Customers produce our revenue and profits.”
The Argil™ process focuses on building cross organisation teams of senior level executives capable of delivering win-win value to both organisations.
Experience has proven that Argil™ consistently delivers outstanding results to senior leaders who have, through equity or authority, the ability to make and implement philosophical and process changes in their organisations. CEO’s who have open minds, and a long term perspective for growth.
The Argil™ process is driven by senior level, seasoned executives capitalising on world-class best-practice tools, best suited for companies who would rank in the Top 3 of their market/ industry, or want to get there!
In a nutshell we identify levers needed to deliver long term, profitable growth for organisations. We ask questions, get into the minds of your customers, and then align strategies based on these insights.
The future of your organisation depends on the quality of your customer conversations and the actions that follow. You must know where you are with your customers and what value you represent to their strategy. We promote on-going independent dialogue and a facilitation process between senior management of two organisations. Our process takes customer relationships beyond price, towards value focused solutions and strategic alignment.
A structured process is followed to develop deep, strategic and long term partnerships.
Phase 1 LISTEN
- Mobilise the senior management team
- Identify and clarify measurement criteria
- Internal assessment, “Where do we think we are with our customer?”
Phase 2 LEARN
- Customer interviews conducted to establish the current reality
- Customer feedback to the senior management team
Phase 3 LEVERAGE
- Joint growth strategy is developed with client and customer
- Growth plans are jointly implemented
