Professionals

Decision-making and tactical training his forte

Hiran H. SENEWIRATNE

DECISION-MAKING: Many people in this country lack decision-making and negotiating skills, which are important skills that one should develop, to be successful in life, Former Deputy Director Research and Analysis and Internal Intelligence in Sri Lanka, Ajith Colonne said.

He said that these skills are necessary for everybody to settle disputes in a balanced manner in a competitive environment.

"The best and the most difficult decision made in my life was sacrificing offers for very attractive senior management positions with all the facilities and requisitions in 1996, to remain a visiting lecturer at the Sir John Kotalawala Defence Academy, for a mere four figure irregular income," he said.

His programmes cover the entire spectrum of decision-making home level to policy, which are more advanced and comprehensive programmes.

Colonne said he has compiled a comprehensive and a highly-specialised teaching module of four-days duration titled Decision Making Under Conditions of Uncertainty: The Rational Approach for the Armed Forces of Sri Lanka, a theoretical and an operational framework based on five academic disciplines and tacit battle experiences of the military officers, which had been revised and improved over 100 times, since 2001.

He said that ownership of several original military concepts, which are already published such as Colonne's Dilemma (an advanced simulated military problem), Logically Reduced Risk, and Wisdom in Military Intelligence and Death Management are some of them.

He claims to be the only lecturer available in Sri Lanka to teach Military Intelligence Analysis from an academic perspective and around 1,500 students as Commissioned Officers in Army, Navy, Air Force and Police have been trained up to now.

Colonne conducts many professional programmes for military personnel, business corporate and factory level officers.

His popular short duration programmes are making a salient different soft skills requiring work and service in office, Journey of self-discovery and on Negotiating Skills are some of the programmes.

According to Colonne most of their programmes are highly professional and advanced type ones fitting to any decision maker in the country.

He conducts many programmes in English and Sinhala from factory level workers to top corporate heads or CEO level in the country.

"My vision is to make the Sri Lankan Military Officers the most effective decision makers in the world," he said.

He also identified a global process error that finalising interviews and competitions by averaging the marks is wrong.

He has introduced new managerial concepts such as Wisdom in military intelligence, Logically Reduced Risk, Inner Circle, Brutal Decisions and Death Management (managing death defying situations).

Colonne's Dilemma, one of the most advanced simulated problems to make the best decision under conditions of uncertainty in the world today brings out six very powerful military and business realities, once solved and identifies a major short coming in the present rational decision making process.

He also conducts another important programme i.e. Responsibility of military spokesmen and journalists concerning security issues. He also conducts a programme on business economics.

The website www.neworiginalthinking.com contains all original conceptual work.

Some of which have been accredited by organisations such as Microsoft and other international organisations.