MTa's experiential learning and development materials are used by trainers and facilitators in over 100 countries, by 1000's of the worlds most demanding organisations. We are a small specialised team, focused on:
- Designing and supplying materials that enable facilitators to deliver world class experiential activities
- Sharing our experience and developing facilitators and trainers
- Delivering team, management and organisational development programmes
- Providing exceptional customer care and support
Our People:-
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Martin Thompson - Founder and Managing Director Martin Thompson has spent most of his working life enabling his customers to improve their businesses’ performance by developing them and their people. Initially Martin was educated as an Experimental Psychologist: he has BA hons. and MA degrees from Cambridge University, a Diploma in Personnel Management and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute Of Personnel and Development*. His first career job, a graduate trainee with Cadbury Schweppes, provided experience in production, industrial engineering, training and sales. Martin then enjoyed HR roles in the engineering and distribution industries before becoming a self employed facilitator of people development in 1982. Once independent he began developing his own experiential approach to learning that could be used indoors. As the founder and CEO of MTa Learning, Martin is best known for designing and developing practical leadership and teamwork training packages, now used in over 100 countries. In addition to providing support to facilitators using these materials, Martin has spent much of his time working with senior teams within, and as an OD consultant for, multinationals across four continents. However because Martin has many long term business relationships his involvement with his customers has often been much wider and deeper than this title might suggest. Typically Martin’s approach is challenging: through careful questioning he enables people to identify and understand the underlying issues behind problems before working with them to develop and use the qualities they require to make progress. As Martin is always seeking to help people make best use of their potential work he avoids the ‘quick fix’ and favours a practical as opposed to a theoretical approach. In recent years Martin has spoken at conferences in USA, Europe and Australasia, including ASTD, CIPD and HRINZ where he has engaged audiences in activity based sessions and presented his approach to facilitation and his theories behind experiential learning. Away from work Martin is energised by the ‘big outdoors’. He runs to keep fit (mentally and physically) competes in triathlons, is in the process of designing and building a ‘sustainable house’ and struggles to come to grips with competitive bridge. *Martin resigned form CIPD in 2011 believing that CIPD's commercial operations in L&D amd OD conflict with the interests of many of their members. |
Jamie Thompson - Director
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Jamie specialises in the use of experiential learning to improve personal, business and organisational performance. He facilitates development programmes in areas such as team skills, communication, leadership and lean processing. He also coaches external facilitators in the effective use of experiential techniques, tools, activities and methods. His career began as a ‘big four’ Management Consultant at Deloitte, he then moved to Yahoo! as a Senior Business Analyst. These world class organisations provided him with a wealth of experience working in both the public and private sectors. Recent projects have include:- |
Claire Baker - Office Manager
Claire has kept the MTa team organised and on track since 2004.
Alex Greenwood - Experiental Learning Advisor
After graduating with a BSc in Marine Biology from Hull University Alex opted for a drier career path and continued his studies gaining an MSc in Environmental Technology. Since then Alex has dipped his toe into the world of business and joined the MTa Team. Alex is tasked with aiding customers to choose the best MTa materials to meet their needs as well as preparation of course materials and the smooth running of the warehouse.
Ralph Woodhead - Lean Expert
Ralph is MTa's lean expert and co-author of our lean game, MTa Kando Lean. A graduate mechanical engineer who became enthused by computer systems for stock control, material planning and production scheduling, becoming an independent consultant project manager for MRP and ERP implementations. Ralph’s ‘Lean Expertise’ enabled us to develop KanDo Lean.
Ralph works with client teams in many organisations, drawing on his personal expertise and knowledge of software, lean thinking and experiential training to introduce change and sustainable business improvement.
Our History
MTa's History MTa was founded in 1981 by Martin Thompson, an experimental psychologist. In the early years MTa specialised in organisational development consultancy. As consultants we developed a series of experiential learning materials which we used as part of our development programmes. Our clients were impressed with these new tools. The tools were engaging, innovative and powerful. Clients were soon asking us how they could purchase their own sets and we realised we'd created something unique. The combination of comprehensive facilitator guides, clever activity design, engaging materials and a focus on learning allowed trainers and facilitators to run professional experiential workshops and development programmes easily and efficiently.
In 1991 we launched the MTa Team KIT with two activities, word spread and it quickly became a 'must have' training tool. Our business and product range has been expanding steadily ever since.