New learning tools can boost understanding and the capability to do difficult jobs

Educational systems and approaches to teaching need to be radically changed if people are to achieve their full potential. According to Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas “it is possible to transform school, higher, professional and lifelong education by making it easy for people to learn, increase their understanding, build their capability and solve complex problems.” His inaugural Kuwait Knowledge Partnership lecture set out how this can be achieved and gave examples of tools that have had a massive impact on understanding and performance in complex fields.

The Professor and author of Winning Companies; Winning People believes “Different people learn in different ways. Learning support tools can help people to overcome barriers to learning. The right tools use a variety of ways of making it very easy for people to quickly understand areas that have hitherto been considered too complex to comprehend. At school level they need to be designed to engage young learners, secure their attention and inspire their imaginations.”

Coulson-Thomas who is also a co-Founder of the Kuwait Knowledge Partnership believes, “Possession of information and knowledge does not of itself lead to understanding or the capability to do things. A new generation of learning and performance tools are enabling average people to excel in challenging roles by equipping them to adopt the approaches of their high performing peers.”

The Professor explains: “Within any community of knowledge workers and professionals whether teachers, engineers or doctors there are a small number of superstars and a long tail of OK people. The high performers are not necessarily cleverer or better educated. They just do the activity in question differently. The performance of others can be increased by making it easy for them to adopt these more effective approaches.”

The right tools can also stretch and develop high performers by freeing them of the more routine aspects of their roles, and enabling them to quickly search for better outcomes. Coulson-Thomas’ Winning Companies; Winning People research programme identifies critical success factors for a wide range of activities from winning business and building relationships to corporate learning and creating and exploiting know-how. Early adopters of tools based upon his approach have obtained returns on investment of over 20, 30 and 70 times within a year on the basis of just one or two of several possible measures of outcomes.

Coulson-Thomas believes education must also help people to be true to themselves. He argues: “Far too much education and training is focused upon helping people to address their weaknesses rather than build upon their strengths. With cost-effective ways of capturing and sharing what super star learners and high performers do differently, the payoff from encouraging people to excel at what they enjoy doing and do best can be enormous.”

The new generation of learning and performance tools the Professor champions can boost performance, speed up learning and other activities, and enable bespoke responses, while at the same time reducing risk, costs and stress and ensuring compliance. They have already been adopted by pioneering companies and are now in use in over 100 countries. Affordable tools can be developed for both teachers and learners, and the latest ones allow for automatic updating whenever users are on-line. Whereas some technologies can de-skill Coulson-Thomas advocates designing them so that people increase their competence and confidence each time they are used.

The implications of the new approach are far reaching. The Professor explains: “People can learn at a time and place of their choice, including when on the move as support can be provided via a laptop or the latest generation of mobile phone. The roles of teachers and trainers are changing from the transmission of information and knowledge to the facilitation of learning and the building of both understanding and capability.”

The new approach also supports the Kuwait Knowledge Partnerships aim of encouraging creativity. Coulson-Thomas feels “Most past education and training has equipped people with commodity knowledge. Training inputs have not led to intellectual capital outputs. In order to break new ground people need to be helped to go out in front. Building controls into learning and support tools means that people can be set free to discover, explore and innovate.”

Coulson-Thomas’ book “Winning Companies; Winning People” is subtitled “making it easy for average performers to adopt winning behaviours”. It sets out a new approach to helping people to understand complex areas and do difficult jobs and can be obtained from http://www.policypublications.com. It gives examples of how pioneering companies have used learning and support tools to increase understanding, build capability and boost performance.

Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas is an experienced director, consultant and educator. He has been a Faculty Dean and the Head of a University campus and is a fellow of seven chartered bodies. The author of over 40 books and reports, he has held professorial appointments in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, India and China, and helped over 100 organisations to improve director, board and corporate performance. He has spoken at over 200 national and international events in 40 countries, and can be contacted via http://www.coulson-thomas.com. His recent books and reports can be obtained from http://www.policypublications.com.

The Kuwait Knowledge Partnership is for the betterment of society and coming generations, and a sustainable future. It achieves this through knowledge-transfer between experts in Kuwait and the wider world, and aims to help young Kuwaitis to develop new thinking and a passion to achieve the highest standard of educational excellence and creativity. The inaugural lecture was delivered at the TIES Center in Kuwait City which promotes relations between westerners and Muslims through dialogue, friendship, and cultural-knowledge exchange.

Organisations can now improve their approach to commissioning by learning from best practice

A range of services are being promoted to help people adopt the approaches of commissioning superstars. They are based upon the findings of a research team led by Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas which reveal organisations that excel at purchasing behave differently from their peers. According to the Professor “Those who want to raise their game can learn from those who secure the benefits of effective purchasing and identify areas for improvement by benchmarking against best practice.”

The research study examined 137 purchasing questions. The resulting 175 page A4 report ‘Effective Purchasing, the critical success factors’ can be used to review an organisation’s approach, strategy and practice, and assess where it stands in relation to the achievements of others. Various policy issues are examined, including relationships with suppliers and ways of measuring purchasing performance.

The Professor believes world class commissioning will be a priority for public as well as private organisations in 2009: “NHS Primary Care Trusts and other UK public bodies, and organisations in other parts of the world are adjusting to a new regime of commissioning. Instead of providing services themselves they are increasingly purchasing services from other organisations.”

According to Coulson-Thomas: “A comprehensive benchmarking service is also available to help people assess their organisation’s performance. Completing a questionnaire enables you to compare your approaches with those of peers and high achievers as recorded in the database.”

The resulting bespoke and confidential benchmarking report includes comparisons with the average for all organisations participating in the research and those that win most benefits from their purchasing functions, as well as a ‘top ten action checklist’.

Prof. Coulson-Thomas explains: “To help users pinpoint the issues which are really important for their firms, the benchmark reports contain a ‘top ten action checklist’ which highlights where the particular organisation falls furthest behind the most successful. This can enable those who are already successful to identify and address particular weaknesses.”

The ‘Effective Purchasing’ report contains 79 diagrams and checklists of key action points. Further information on the critical success factors report and the bespoke benchmarking service can be obtained from http://www.policypublications.com. Both the report and the benchmarking service can be ordered from this website.

Reviews of the approach adopted by a particular organisation and various presentations, courses and workshops on the critical success factors for effective purchasing are also available. Those who would like further information on the study led by Professor Coulson-Thomas and the resulting services, or would like to discuss the key findings can contact him via http://www.adaptation.ltd.uk.

Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas is an experienced consultant and author of ‘Winning Companies; Winning People, making it easy for average performers to adopt winning behaviours’. He has reviewed and improved the processes and practices of over 100 companies, helped over 100 boards to raise board and/or corporate performance, and spoken at over 200 national, international and corporate conferences in 35 countries. He can be contacted via http://www.coulson-thomas.com

Over 2,000 organisations have participated in various investigations led by Prof. Coulson-Thomas into what high performers do differently. The critical success factors which have been identified are set out in a series of reports produced by Policy Publications. Further information, these reports and his book ‘Winning Companies; Winning People’ can be obtained from: http://www.policypublications.com