ABOUT METAPRAXIOS.IO
Built on one uncomfortable truth.Â
Most learning doesn't change what people do. We've spent thirty years on that problem, and we've built a method that does.Â
The Gap Between Knowing & Doing
"The test of an idea is whether it becomes warm in the heads and hearts and hands of other people."
Most learning doesn't change what people do.
Â
That observation - uncomfortable, obvious once named - has driven thirty years of work. Derek Shirley spent two decades as a clinical psychologist witnessing capable people fail to act on what they knew. In parallel, he spent twenty-five years building Cornerstone Performance Solutions into a multi-award-winning L&D business operating across fifteen countries, trying to close that gap in practice, not just in theory.
​
What he found is that the problem is seldom actually a training problem. It is an agency problem. The gap between knowing and doing is not closed by more content, better slides, or smarter tools. It is closed by developing the structural capacity of a person to act — with judgment, with confidence, and with the ability to adapt when the situation shifts.
​
Metapraxis.io was founded to bring that architecture to organisations ready for it. Not another workshop. A method that actually lands.
30+
Years developing the architecture.
15
Countries where the work has been proven.
7
Spicy science-based frameworks.
1
Integrated architecture - Education for Agency
A different Kind of Outcome
We believe in employees who are genuinely capable — who know what to do in situations they haven't seen before, who can make decisions under uncertainty without waiting to be told, and who carry their development forward long after the programme ends.
​
We believe in executives who witness that change rather than audit its absence.
Capable, not just trained.
People who act differently under real pressure — not just in the room where the programme ran.
L&D that earns its budget.
Executives who see changed behaviour months later — not teams stuck in the same frustration, plaster over plaster.
AI as edge, not crutch.
Organisations whose people use AI to amplify judgment — not replace it. The tool in the hands of a capable agent, not a substitute for one.
The Person Behind The Work
Dr Derek Shirley
Cognitive psychologist | Learning Architect | CEO | Founder
Derek Shirley is the kind of thinker who has never been satisfied with ideas that don't survive contact with reality. His doctoral research examined intuition and professional mastery - the beginning of a question he has never stopped asking: why do capable people consistently fail to act on what they know?
​
He didn't answer it from the outside. He co-founded Cornerstone Performance Solutions in 2000 and spent the next twenty-five years proving and stress-testing his thinking at scale - building a multi-award-winning business across fifteen countries, watching ideas succeed and fail in coaching rooms, boardrooms, and learning programmes across every sector.
​
The distilled result is Education for Agency: seven integrated frameworks grounded in cognitive science, pedagogy, and organisational psychology, designed for the world organisations actually inhabit - complex, uncertain, and increasingly shaped by AI.
​
He now leads Metapraxis.io, working with L&D leaders, executives, and teams who are done with insight that doesn't land.