The Campbell Academy Blog | Colin Campbell (65)

Learning…..again

You can take this as part two of a blog that started yesterday when I discussed harnessing collective intelligence.

One of the things I was able to do in the ITI education meeting (and in our presentation to the ITI board) was to participate and contribute as best I could in a room where I felt entirely intimidated.

But one of the other things I was also able to do at the same time was observe and learn and take things away that would make it better for me and for the people who work with me and for our organisation moving forward.

It's astonishing to look at these things and to see how progress is made in a bigger organisation or a more mature group of people who have been doing this for longer and who have huge and massive collective intelligence and experience.

Alexander Ochsner, the CEO of the ITI, was the head of implant divisions for continents, so organisations bigger than I can possibly fathom.

He was head in the Far East for Straumann, and he was head of Nobel Biocare in Europe.

He has had the most extraordinary jobs, and therefore, running an organisation such as the ITI is more like a hobby to him, with a much smaller group of people, a much smaller budget and much smaller day-to-day concerns.

But that said, you're able to watch this and to learn and to see how he does it, how he engages and aligns his team and how he goes about things in a systematic way over a period of years to create a culture and a structure which allows growth and improvement.

And so, it was a privilege to turn up here amongst these people and to spend time (I even got paid a little bit of money for coming).

But more than that, what I got paid was knowledge, experience and tools to allow me to try to make it better where I live and where I work.