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The group's Dorothy Perkins women's
wear chain, for example, has more than 500 branches. Every branch manager and all area and
regional managers have been through Speakers International peak-performance training. Walk
into a training session and you're likely to see petite women managers breaking through
thick boards with their bare hands, learning to juggle and developing new memory-training
techniques.
Says Personnel Director Kim Morton: "We want all
our people to realize they can develop talents beyond what they may have thought
possible." 22
Her company is also using other training in innovation
techniques and Kaizen continuous-improvement methods to increase the supply of ideas from
all 6,000 staff members.
In three separate 1996 trials using accelerated
learning methods, store sales in three months increased by 10 percent. In the full 1995-96
financial year, Dorothy Perkins increased its profits from $6.6 million to $25 million.
The total Burton Group raised its full-year profits by 54 percent to $246 million. 23
"We certainly can't attribute all that to
training," says John Hoerner. "But the ability to use new methods to improve the
skills of management and staff is undoubtedly a key factor. That involves, firstly, all
senior executives combining both long-term leadership and short-term management roles. It
involves a corporate culture where everyone is encouraged to be a lifelong learner, and a
creative, self-acting manager. It involves training and development programs that produce
specific results both for the group and for all the individuals involved in it. And it
entails efficient communications so we can duplicate innovations that work." 24
The school or college as a business
venture
Author Alvin Toffler has described knowledge as
"the ultimate business resource".25 And where university-based
knowledge has already teamed up with innovative business, the results have changed the
world. The Stanford University-venture capital-brainpower base for Silicon Valley,
M.I.T.'s Media Lab, and the bonds between the giant Japanese companies and their
universities are striking examples.
Now some schools and colleges are moving in the same
direction. Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Alaska is one model. Another comes from British
twin entrepreneurs Peter and Paul Templeton. Their family runs two private London
colleges, Lansdowne and Duff Miller, which
Contents Page Preface
Introduction
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