Embracing personalised learning support could increase the contribution of higher education

Successful transformation in the sense of becoming a high performance organisation that can
simultaneously deliver multiple objectives can be achieved according to Prof. Colin CoulsonThomas. Delivering an opening plenary of the Association of University Administrators Annual
Open Forum for Managing Change in Higher Education he called for the adoption of more
affordable and less disruptive approaches such as the provision of better learning and performance
support that can quickly change behaviours and benefit students and staff as well as universities.
The University of Greenwich academic reports there are cheaper, flexible, more focused and less
disruptive alternatives to the general, expensive and time consuming approaches being adopted.
Change is occurring in higher education but many universities are missing opportunities to provide
the more personalised 24/7 learning support that could impact upon a range of their activities and
massively increase their cost-effectiveness, creativity, relevance and contribution to society.
Using a variety of examples Coulson-Thomas illustrated key findings from his recent reports that
draw upon a five-year investigation into the most cost-effective route to high performance
organisations. He showed how a variety of separate initiatives can be replaced by a simpler and
more flexible approach that can boost performance, speed up and personalize responses, increase
engagement and understanding, allow flexible working and learning, ensure compliance and reduce
stress by making it easier for front-line staff to do difficult jobs and for students to learn.
Coulson-Thomas believes: Universities are sometimes concerned with knowledge about things
rather than understanding how best to do things. In many fields innovation is relentless. Cutting
edge technologies may be current for a matter of months. Some companies have narrow windows of
weeks or days in which to develop and provide the international learning support that can equip
people from diverse communities to understand, sell, adopt, support and benefit from them. Social
networking and flexible performance support can roll out global solutions to problems and
responses to opportunities that people did not know they had a few hours before.
Highlighting innovations and the benefits of greater connectivity the author of Transforming
Knowledge Management, Talent Management 2, and Transforming Public Services showed how the
provision of personalised 24/7 learning and performance support could transform many aspects of
our lives. The 'new leadership' he advocates works with existing people, cultures and structures and
puts greater emphasis upon implementation and particularly bottom-up and front-line support that
helps customer-facing communities to excel at important tasks and enables more effective learning.
University of Greenwich academic Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas is an experienced vision holder of
successful transformation programmes who has helped organisations in over 40 countries to improve
director, board and corporate performance. He holds a portfolio of board and other roles and is the author of
over 50 books and reports. Since being the world's first professor of corporate transformation he has held
professorial appointments in Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, India and China. Colin was
educated at the LSE, the London Business School and the Universities of Aston, Chicago, South Africa and
Southern California. He is a fellow of seven chartered bodies and obtained first place prizes in the final
examinations of three professions.
The opening plenary on Achieving Successful Corporate Transformation by Prof. Coulson-Thomas, author
of Winning Companies; Winning People was delivered at the Association of University Administrator's
(AUA) Annual Open Forum for Managing Change in Higher Education which was held at London
Metropolitan University. The presentation summarised some key findings from Colin's latest reports
Transforming Knowledge Management, Talent Management 2, and Transforming Public Services which are
available from www.policypublications.com.