The Old Approach

• Published in: Managing Value in Organisations pp. 53 - 82
• Main Author: Carroll, Donal
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Taylor & Francis 2012; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Personnel & human resources management; Research & development management; Sporting Outfitters; business approach; management model; organisations' traditional management; Current Mould; Resilient Learning; Business Case; Continuing Improvement Journey; Social Enterprise Company; Business Readiness; Short Term Personal Gain; Founder's Syndrome; Simon Caulkin; Unpromising Circumstances; Embrace Social Media; Social Stock Exchange; Learning Model; Larger Family; organisational values; Straight Stuff; Long Trail; Nudger; Philosophy Football; senior management team; Applied Business Research; Dominant Management Model; Case Studies; staff meetings; CVP; Continual Service Improvement; organisational problems
• ISBN: 9781409426479; 1409426475; 9781138271258; 113827125X
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315593685-10

This chapter explores some implications of current management, learning and business approaches. The four case studies of organisational problems' give an outline of how they were tackled using the organisations' traditional management, learning and business thinking. Firstly, traditional training had been tried with little change or improvement so an innovative approach was negotiated. This aimed to clarify and redefine purpose, get everyone aligned with it, and on a continuing improvement journey towards excellence'. Secondly, the programme was designed to culminate with participants presenting their services as part of a business case to a commissioning' panel. Thirdly, the task was to identify and agree organisational values and enact them to develop organisational excellence and agility. Finally, the organisation had a long-established senior management team (SMT) with also many long-staying staff. The new learning approach must lead the management and business approach, as business focuses on customers. Free transfer comes with a warning: it is synoptic but less silence-imbued and more earned. It contains development ideas from the work expressed in the form of Commandments, Abandonments and Questions. Commandments give guidance for care and new development, Abandonments are scissors for comfort-pruning, and Questions are growth-seeds, watering direction. Each idea asks a challenging question for organisations seeking to use the approach. This chapter discusses the two journeys, the ideas in the organisations, and the writer, with the purpose of enabling other organisations to use the approach. It can be viewed as a synoptic business poem which seeks to continue to create imaginative value. Its form came from an interview with Jennifer Egan about her latest novel, A Visit from the Goon Squad. She claimed it worked because the format underlines a structural point she was making about brevity, in an awkward, silence-imbued relationship.