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In the current educational climate, there's a real danger that students get little encouragement to excel at anything. Yet mastering something can create great confidence that will spill over into the rest of life.

Have you got an 'anonymous suggestions' mechanism for people in your organisation? Do you produce a monthly newsletter that publicises each and every suggestion and outlines the management's responses to it? Many of the most innovative organisations get their best ideas from the people they teach or serve, because they listen intently and regularly.

Academic institutions solely headed up by practitioners, could benefit from the joint-directorship of specialist managers and entrepreneurs.

We like to involve the senior students in the admissions process - right from helping sift through application forms to interviewing candidates. They bring a whole new perspective on evaluating the newcomers.

There should be an acclimatisation month for new students at university: one-to-one meetings, support groups, and peer mentoring by previous year's students. This should apply to both undergraduates and post-graduates. It would make the following year or years of course-life and personal-life so much richer for that sensitive preparation period. As it is, 99% of university departments offer little more than a two-hour 'get to know you' session which only half the faculty and few former students bother to go to.

Keep an eye out for the young people who are getting by, but who nonetheless are ticking bombs because they have unresolved, unaddressed emotional issues which will hold them back and which one day could seriously bring them down.

Peer counselling is a very useful first step for students who find themselves worried about things. The peer counsellor can help the individual pinpoint the problem for themselves, and help them devise their own solutions - all this without the stigma of going to a professional counsellor.

The vast majority of young men and women would welcome a traditional one-to-one mentor-mentee relationship with a senior adult with whom to discuss personal life and specific vocational choices and development. Mentorship makes particularly good sense because, on their own, a school or university can rarely succeed in giving the intellectual nourishment that results in a student excelling. The right mentor could make all the difference.

There's no collaboration between schools, universities and companies, hence students are too often ill-equipped with the skills to cope with their new environment when they move from one level to another.

A good measure of any organisation is how well people are known within it. Are its individuals understood and appreciated, or are they just part of the crowd?

Organisations need a robust and regular mechanism for anonymous ground-level feedback that can reach the policy-makers. In respect of these suggestions, decisions shouldn't simply be imposed, they should be voted on. That might seem like a hassle in the short term, but prevents long term malaise.

You should take full responsibility for your own learning-curve within any institution, but that doesn't mean you can't approach your seniors and ask them to support the development course that you've planned for yourself. This might include different departmental postings, IT courses, projects of particular interest to you, and even secondment to another company or volunteer organisation. Point out that your organisation will benefit from your increased skills and confidence.

Regular, even daily, team work in which people have practise of being leader and of being led, is very developing of the interpersonal skills that will form the cornerstone of most professional lives.

Some companies run outwardbound courses to develop the skills and working relationships of their young professionals. These are invariably a great success. If a training institution treats its students well, the students will be happy to come back on a regular basis and lend a hand.

Having top professionals give guest lectures to students is all well and good, and should be a regular, not an occasional thing. What's best is if you have that guest explain their step-by-step thinking processes in achieving what they did. This allows the students to see that there was an understandable progression towards the achievement.

A good variety of students is always a healthy thing. This should mean different interests, backgrounds, and if possible, different cultures and nationalities.

More schools and universities should consider offering Mandarin as a foreign language - think of the role China seems likely to play as an economic and political force in this new century.

Think about the noise levels where ever you teach. Computers are noisy, and uncarpeted floors don't help. Noise is a major fatigue factor for anyone teaching.

There needs to be an easily accessible and popular communal space where students and staff can mix informally, and where lots of important business can be done over tea and biscuits.

Some of the most important information sharing, relationship-building and work initiatives happen around the coffee machine, in the gym, or with a drink after work.

Don't let the coffee room get turned into a storage room or into someone's office. It's not just a coffee room, it's the heart of the place.