A word from our CEO

Sometime ago I read with interest the story of two young men who had developed an idea – they just needed someone to back them. Confidently, they approached Atari and said “Hey, we have this amazing thing – just pay our wages, we’ll come and work for you and give it to you. It even uses some of your parts.” They were shown the door.
Not to be deterred, they met with representatives from Hewlett Packard, who confidently said, “We don’t need you, and furthermore, you haven’t even made it through college yet.”
Still undeterred, they started their own company and built it for themselves. The two men were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the company they started, Apple, istoday worth $US500 billion (AP, 2012).
Imagine if your staff had the innovative thinking of the two Steves. Or – sit down when you do this – ask yourself if your people have the innovative thinking capacity of the people the two aspiring entrepreneurs met at Atari and Hewlett Packard?The latter is scary. Atari being the “first port of call” for the Steves, made one of the worst business decisions in history, and where is Atari now? They’re around… just.
Competition drives innovation – this is a key economic reality and in today’s global marketplace, competition is a certainty.  However, what does not automatically follow is a company’s ability to innovate. The reason is that it’s not the entity itself that is able to innovate, it’s the ‘human capital’ component – your staff members need to have the capacity to innovate.
The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) recently completed the research piece Building the capacity to innovate: the role of human capital. The research identified three key factors (stimuli) as instrumental in developing human capital for enterprise innovation. They are: people management; knowledge management; and creativity management. One of the key findings revealed that learning and development, more specifically the development of learning cultures, is not simply the provision of training. Equally important were the external links with training companies. What the research revealed was that a “quick” training fix failed to develop among staff a learning culture that fostered innovative thinking.
There has been much discussion around the concept of “training for training’s sake”. This was the historic approach by many employers to human capital development. However, the training failed to deliver the necessary skills required to thrive in the workplace and be a more productive and innovative employee. The missing link in training has often been the failure to identify exactly what skills the participant needed to learn. When this is accurately identified, employees receive worthwhile training, are motivated by the learning leading to productive outcomes for the company and the establishment of a learning culture begins. The cornerstone in this process is the ability to identify what training is needed by the employee to allow them to thrive in their job role – this has long been an issue for employers.
Considerable research and development has been conducted by JMA Analytics, a national Vocational, Education and Training research company, to solve this very issue. A key analytical tool is now available that is able to measure capability by identifying what skill the employee has, but is not recognised, and what training is required to enable the employee to be a productive innovative contributor. Additionally, the analytical tool also assesses the five critical thinking skills, further increasing the capability of your staff.
Importantly, NCVER research identified that the relationship with the training provider to be key.
As part of our service to employers, Western College can manage the entire process including mentoring of employees through the analysis and training process fostering the learning culture identified in the report. The employer can then get on with the implementation of another key factor in the innovative process – the implementation and management of high performance work practices.
Contact Western College today about capability management. We are more than happy to help foster innovation and a sustainable learning culture in your business to turn every employee into a “Steve”.