Paul Matthews

Long before Paul became sought after as an expert in the area of informal learning and workplace performance support, he grew up on a farm in New Zealand. His practical approach typifies the well-known Kiwi can-do attitude and focus on solutions that actually work. Leaving the farm behind, he travelled the world and gained valuable experience working in many industries and in many countries. His last big corporate role was Director for a NASDAQ-quoted global IT company. He set up People Alchemy Ltd in 1999 and ran leadership and management development programmes for many blue chip clients in the UK. His company now focuses on providing online tools for learning, especially experiential and informal learning. Email: paul.matthews@peoplealchemy.co.uk Call: 01908 325 167 Web: http://www.peoplealchemy.co.uk Paul's life and work history can only be described as a little unusual. He grew up on a hill country farm in New Zealand and went on to study both Agriculture and Engineering at University. He graduated with first class honours and a couple of years later won a national farm machinery award for the design of a seed drill. The drills were exported by his employer to over 20 countries around the world. Years later, when he was travelling in Ecuador, he was amazed to see one of his seed drills up for sale in a second-hand farm machinery yard by the side of the road. As many Kiwis do, he set off to see the world and travelled extensively, stopping along the way to earn money for the next adventure. He then landed what was to him a dream job, working for an adventure travel company leading overland expeditions into many remote areas of the world. All this experience, which lasted over four years, has given him some great stories to tell of far-flung places, from the Congo jungle to the Chinese Taklamakan desert. By the way, locals say the name means 'go in and you will never come out'. Paul then 'got a real job' as an engineer in the UK. It proved quite a challenge to make the transition from travelling the wild places on the planet and needing to build a campfire each night, to working regular hours and commuting. After some success, he was headhunted into a NASDAQ-quoted multi-national technology company, where he eventually held the role of Customer Services Director. It was during this time that he really started to appreciate the importance of learning, and was surprised that his adventures and the experience of observing people learn to cope with unfamiliar situations were so valuable in understanding learning. His curiosity led him into studying psychology, NLP and many other areas relating to how the mind works - knowledge which he could then translate back into the workplace. The constraints of corporate life lost their appeal and Paul started his own company, People Alchemy Ltd, in 1999, working as a consultant, trainer and coach in the areas of management and leadership. Most of his clients were blue chip organizations and one client programme had over 1,200 delegates. He soon recognized the need for more direct performance support and the importance of informal learning in all its guises, rather than the common L&D reliance on classroom training. Paul has a way of engaging people with this changing paradigm so they can grasp it, incorporating it into their own organizational learning and capability strategies. His approach helps people to fully cater to the learning needs of their staff so they can get the job done.