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About Russ Lewis - Researcher

Leading Learning 

My research brings together my passions for: 
- helping managers improve their organisations and, 
- researching how to make organisations more effective. 

I help academics and organisational managers learn from each other through knowledge exchange.
Doctoral Researcher & Founder A-L.I

Dr Russ Lewis (digital transformation)


My Background

I'm a self-taught guy.  

You see, like most people, I learn by doing.

I learn when I’m doing something that has a tangible outcome.

Because that’s how I encounter real-world obstacles that make me think about the problem and act to find or develop solutions.

So far, there's not been many things I haven't been able to learn, although jazz guitar is still beyond me!

Formal learning

The last formal teaching I had was as an apprentice at Rolls-Royce in Bristol, UK. I loved the practical skills we learned in the workshops and foundries.

In my last month there I learned computer programming from Don Alcock’s book. He drew bugs where learners were likely to make mistakes, so I learned it was OK to create bugs, as long as you fixed them.

Forty years later, I’m improving my skills with Oxygen Builder and custom types in Wordpress by building sites to help share knowledge.

Qualifications

My doctorate (professional studies) is about the ways managers overcome barriers to improvement, my Master's was in Organisational Agility, and I am a qualified professional coach.

I have no qualifications in IT, yet designed and built TfL's contactless fares engine used 15 million times a day by passengers in London, wrote courses on web services and software development, and taught thousands of attendees for Learning Tree International.

 

Sharing "How to"

What gives me more pleasure than self-learning is helping others to learn by doing.

When I do coaching, digital, and agile transformation activities right, I help managers solve their real-world problems, collaboratively. Reg Revans called this Action Learning.

It's always thrilling, because I have no answers, only a process of co-inquiry and facilitation.

Solutions emerge, unpredictably.

Emergence is the outcome that matters. 

MISSION

I am on a mission to improve the world of work. I've been privileged to love what I do and want everyone to have as much satisfaction as possible from their work. That includes doing meaningful, valuable, and respectable activities in a psychologically and physically safe environment.
November 11, 2014
Agile was Designed for Developers not Management

Don’t be Fooled by this Agile Craze If you are in a management or leadership role, the best way to help an agile team succeed is to learn what your team needs from you. Increase Agile Management Beyond the Team It’s relatively easy to agilise a single team, but the real challenge lies in ensuring […]

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September 19, 2020
The Perfect Ten: Ep 5: Agility

Marilise de Villiers, host and author of Your Bullyproof Life, interviewed fellow coach, Andrea Darabos, and myself about Agilty. Specifically, what it mean in the workplace as one of 10 skills organisations need to develop to thrive.

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October 6, 2021
What does focussing on culture mean to XYZ Consulting?

We have some mid-tier consultants in at the moment who are "focussing on culture." Since we don't separate culture from delivering value to customers, I asked what that meant in practice. Apparently: "A generic scheme of manoeuvre could involve a diagnostic that looks at things like empowerment, psychological safety, collaboration, purpose, customer centricity… then based […]

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Copyright Russ Lewis 1994-2025
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