Who We Are
Our Journey
As the digital revolution has accelerated at an exponential rate, it has become clear that the preeminent competencies for surviving and thriving in today’s world are resilience - the power to learn, unlearn and relearn. Learning about ourselves, learning about others, and applying our personal learning powers with purpose - mindful agency - has become the critical requirement for survival in the complex systems to which we all belong.
In 2000, a team of researchers at Bristol University set out to understand the complex mix of values, attitudes, skills, dispositions and self-stories that enable people to lean into risk, uncertainty and challenge and emerge from that process stronger and wiser. They identified eight dimensions of learning power. The dimensions are not simply skills or competencies but holistic attributes that we all possess, all of which involve thinking, feeling and doing. Humans do none of those three things in isolation from the other two.
Now, with over 100,000 data points and global impact stories across a range of industries our team has a very clear idea about what mindful, agentic and resilient leaders, learners and systems look like and how they behave.
We have developed and refined a digital capability to assess learning power for resilient agency, at individual, team or organisational level and we have the ability to structure bespoke intervention programmes and to measure impact with validated impact data. This is our Work Integrated Learning Design process, or WILD.
Over time, we have come to understand a great deal about the conditions that need to be in place for people to thrive. It’s clear that the world needs this work more than ever before; WILD Learning has the capacity to create deep, sustainable and transformative impact.
With the insights and skills developed through a WILD journey, individuals are equipped to build not only a deep inner learning about themselves and their self-stories but the capacity to deploy their learning power outwards and forwards to create change. Let us show you how we can help…
Humans are Complex Living Systems
Our Values
We are a company of like-minded people who believe in living by the values that we promote. At heart we are learners, who grow with the people that we support. We don’t offer all the answers to our clients but we offer structured and highly impactful ways for our clients to find answers for themselves. We recognise the unique qualities of the people and the organisations that we support, many of them have become companions on our journey and you can read some of their stories here
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We do what really matters and we aim to live and model our values. We try to do the right thing, no matter how hard.
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We try to make a difference in the world by serving the greater good. We seek better solutions for the people and communities that we serve.
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We are confident and enterprising but with the humility to adapt as we learn, both from the wisdom of others and from new ways of knowing.
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We accept and lean in to continuous and emergent change as we grow; our playbook is never a rule book.
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We are inclusive, respecting all perspectives and actively seeking to find and engage with those who are without a voice.
Our Purpose
Our intention is to have transformational impact. Our focus is to develop self-leadership, the capacity to lead others, improve the quality of relationships and provide the thinking tools to seek solutions to complex problems.
What we do works – we have seen this again and again – and so our purpose is to reach as far and wide as we can to bring the capacity for personal growth, mindful agency and a resilient mindset to our clients.
The world has never been a more complex place for leaders, learners and businesses to navigate. We are all enmeshed in complex systems which are both real and virtual. We worry about our children, we worry about the sustainability of our businesses or our jobs, and we worry about our communities. We question our ability to sort out the real from the unreal, the true from the false, the wheat from the chaff. At WILD, we want to help with these challenges and to make a difference.
Because this work is important for everyone, we also run a Community Interest Company (CIC) which is a not-for-profit enterprise that allows us to reach into disadvantaged parts of our communities. Through this entity, we continue to invest in research and development, refining and enhancing our capacity to deliver.
Self Leadership means being the pilot, not the passenger in your own life. It includes self awareness, self-knowledge, humility, listening to your ‘inner voice’ and a willingness to ‘learn your way forwards to a meaningful purpose.
Learning Relationships means being able to listen to other people and learn from and with them. Having a sense of belonging. Being able to lead a team purposefully forwards, collaborating and harnessing collective intelligence.
Complex Problem Solving means knowing how to go about identifying, understanding and analysing complex problems; how to identiy, select, collect and curate the data inormation and experience needt o toslve those problems and design change strategies. Selecting a ‘fit for purpose’ solution, testing, prototyping and implementing it.
Our Team
Leadership Team
WILD is led by a richly diverse leadership team with extensive leadership experience in academia, corporate governance and education.
Professor Ruth Crick
Founder
Ruth is the founder of WILD and the research scientist behind WILD’s Learning Power profiles and learning journey design principles. As a former school leader, then University of Bristol academic she is currently visiting professor of Learning Analytics at UTS in Sydney.
Jim Bentley
Chairman
Jim has 30 years of global leadership experience in public, private and academic sectors, mainly in water and infrastructure. As well as being an experienced CEO and Operations Director he has been a leadership advisor to CEOs and executive teams and run a number of leadership development programmes for clients.
Graham Silverthorne
Executive Director
Graham is a former Head of large schools in the UK and Asia. He is an accredited performance coach and coach trainer and consults globally in the education sector with a focus on coaching, people development, strategic visioning and futures thinking.
Di Howard
Senior Associate
(Corporate and Coaching)
Di has been supporting organisations through transformational change for over 30 years. She is an accredited coach and consults across both the public and private sector specialising in customer centric strategic change and the associated behaviours, practices and procedures required to realise tangible benefits.
Patrick Aspinall Bailey
CTO
Shaofu Huang
Head of Analytics
Shaofu is a data scientist with a background in social science research. He has 10 years of experience in developing learning analytics and behavioural modelling in user-led research for public organisations, businesses, and education.
Strategic Advisers
Elaine Roberts
Professor Caroline Field
Coaching and Learning Associates
Our team is supported by a network of coaching and learning associates who lead on different projects.
Helen Tracy
Helen is a learning solutions designer, consultant and coach. She has supported some of the world’s largest organisations to transform their leadership and culture, and develop their business critical skills, with a particular focus on navigating complexity and thriving as people as well as organisations.
