HOST Policy Research: The Team
Dick
Willis
Dick Willis, is a Director of CNR Ltd, the business support consultancy and became a HOST Associate in 2009. From a background of working with troubled teenagers he spent many years managing a succession of major training programmes before moving into consultancy and training. Much of his work has been related to the adoption of Internet technologies, both in education and the small business sector. Since 2000, he has worked with a succession of national and regional business support initiatives. His most recent assignment with HOST was as a member of the team evaluating the Teaching and Learning Programme for the Learning & Skills Improvement Service, with a particular focus on the activities relating to the use of ICT for learning. Further details of Dick’s work and experience are given below:
Project Management: Dick is a PRINCE2 registered practitioner. Using suitably adapted PRINCE approaches, he has managed a wide range of projects in recent years for clients as diverse as the Childrens’ Workforce Development Council, the Small Business Service, Bristol City Council, Skills for Health and the Dept of Trade and Industry.
ICT and learning: Dick was Managing Director of South Bristol Learning Network, the Bristol-based social enterprise which developed the CyberSkillsTM initiative, subsequently rolled out globally by ICL/Fujitsu. During this period SBLN was the UK partner in the ESPRIT programme ‘Web for Schools’, a pioneering educational internet project through which 700 European teachers were trained to train their students in web technologies. These groups were subsequently supported to develop internationally collaborative online projects. Out of this activity came the recognition of the value of online collaboration as a medium for enquiry-based education. Dick is active in lobbying for greater inclusion of this approach in, particularly, the secondary curriculum as a means to prepare pupils for the patterns of distributed work and learning that are increasingly dominant in the business world. SBLN became a part of the City of Bristol College where Dick had a responsibility for increasing the use of Internet technologies within the College and led a seven College consortium in an exercise to procure a shared learning platform.
Distributed working and knowledge management: The use of distributed working technologies has increased dramatically in recent years. Dick developed a shared knowledge/peer support programme for the Dept of Trade and Industry, to support its national network of 300 business IT advisers. This experience led to the development of intranets for Skills for Health and the Government’s Small Business Council as well as the commercial development of a small-scale knowledge sharing facility, Editas (www.cnr.co.uk/editas.htm) which enables members of the network to request advice from their peers, captures, publishes and analyses all responses and then assigns the resulting knowledge item to a shared, searchable knowledge base. Dick has undertaken knowledge management activities within his work for the DTI, SBS, BLU (the development arm of the Small Business Service) and with other clients, for example DCELLS, the Education Dept of the Welsh Assembly Government. Dick was a core team member of the Technology Strategy Board’s Grid Computing Knowledge Transfer Network, and focused on small business engagement. He is a Member of the Institute of Knowledge Transfer.
Project evaluation and review: Dick is a member of the UK Evaluation Society and has undertaken a wide range of evaluation activities over an extended period of time, using a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative approaches. These range from a review of Engineering Provision within the County of Avon’s FE provision (which now seems like pre-history!) to more recent assignments such as the evaluation of the Key Performance Indicators for the Business Link Network, which was undertaken for the East of England Development Agency. Other contracts have included a study of the websites of the key members of the Childrens’ Workforce Network and defining policy recommendations to improve linkage and better integrated working, and the evaluation of the Social Economy Bristol Development Fund, for Bristol City Council. Dick is a Cognitive Edge accredited practitioner, able to use their range of narrative-based workshop techniques and their SenseMakerR instrument to help explore and understand issues of organisational complexity.
Training and facilitation: After leaving full-time work in education, Dick worked for several years as a freelance management trainer, particularly in outdoor environments. He retains his training skills and these have been used on a number of projects in recent years, especially those involving the development and implementation of distributed working systems. He is an experienced group facilitator and has led a wide variety of group activities for clients including the DTI, BLU, Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Office of the Third Sector. He recently undertook an assignment for South West Screen, working with a number of stakeholders to develop a sustainable business plan for the establishment of an Animation Academy, based with Aardman in Bristol (unfortunately shelved due to the current economic situation). In a subsequent project he developed a business plan for the proposed Institute of Media Innovation and Training in Plymouth.
Management responsibilities: Dick is currently a Director of CNR Ltd, an IiP accredited business support consultancy. CNR is kept deliberately small to maintain minimal operational overheads with maximum flexibility and it works through a network of trusted associates and business partnerships. His earlier roles include being a Head of Faculty at the City of Bristol College, running SBLN Ltd as a College-owned company, managing the UK’s leading indoor climbing centre and managing the County of Avon’s portfolio of training initiatives. He is on the Board of several SMEs.
Other interests: Dick is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is one of the world’s leading cave explorers and has led or participated in expeditions to a number of European countries although his major exploration focus is on areas further afield, including Central Asia (for which he was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 1990), China, Thailand, Borneo, Java, West Papua and Papua New Guinea. He was awarded the Patrick Ness Award by the Royal Geographical Society for his services to Speleology. He is an experienced public speaker and has worked freelance in radio and print travel journalism.
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