(CLP) Programs

Appleton Greene corporate training programs are all process-driven. They are used as vehicles to implement tangible business processes within clients’ organizations, together with training, support and facilitation during the use of these processes. Corporate training programs are therefore implemented over a sustainable period of time, that is to say, between 1 year (incorporating 12 monthly workshops), and 4 years (incorporating 48 monthly workshops). Your program information guide will specify how long each program takes to complete. Each monthly workshop takes 6 hours to implement and can be undertaken either on the client’s premises, an Appleton Greene serviced office, or online via the internet. This enables clients to implement each part of their business process, before moving onto the next stage of the program and enables employees to plan their study time around their current work commitments. The result is far greater program benefit, over a more sustainable period of time and a significantly improved return on investment.

Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. All (CLP) programs are implemented over a sustainable period of time, usually between 1-4 years, incorporating 12-48 monthly workshops and professional support is consistently provided during this time by qualified learning providers and where appropriate, by Accredited Consultants.

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Executive summary

Strategic Decision-Making

History

The very nature of how we have made decisions in the past and what we have measured to assess performance and productivity has almost always been biased towards a retrospective view of past events. We seek information from a series of actions or events that have already occurred, and we use these to assess the effectiveness, success or otherwise of past strategies, approaches, and actions to inform us about future direction.

There is an inherent level of confidence with this approach as it offers us comfort to know that we are utilising and applying hard data, facts and figures that are measurable, known and established. It leads us to believe that our decision making is based on high levels of certainty, with predictable outcomes and lower levels of risk tolerance for factors that may unhinge our plans. The inertia with this type of thinking is strong, and it is very difficult to change given that it is indoctrinated in our business systems and corporate level of risk aversion, i.e., the way we measure performance, what we value, how we determine productivity and our desire to avoid making mistakes. In fact, “…the way that things have always been done” is a well-known colloquial expression often used to describe traditional or conventional practices, methods, or procedures. It signifies a reluctance to change or innovate in favour of maintaining the status quo, i.e., existing, established routines.

Related to this aversion are some key phrases that are common in today’s workplace:

Resistance to Change: Resistance to altering existing processes, even when those processes may no longer be the most effective or efficient, which can stem from a fear of the unknown, a reluctance to challenge the status quo, or a preference for familiar routines.

Institutional Inertia: It is frequently used in the context of organisations and institutions, where long-standing practices may persist despite being outdated or counterproductive. This inertia can be a barrier to progress and adaptability.

Cultural and Social Norms: An application to cultural or societal norms and traditions, reflecting a desire to maintain traditional values and practices.

Risk Aversion: People or organisations that adhere to established ways of doing things may do so out of a risk-averse mentality. Change is often accompanied by uncertainty, and individuals or entities may be hesitant to take on that uncertainty.

Innovation and Improvement: Challenging the status quo and being open to change is essential for progress and innovation. When organisations or individuals cling too tightly to tradition, it can hinder opportunities for improvement and growth.

Balancing Tradition and Innovation: While it’s important to respect and learn from established practices, it’s equally important to remain open to new ideas and adapt to changing circumstances. Striking a balance between tradition and innovation is a common challenge in various domains.

There can be valid reasons for maintaining certain practices due to their effectiveness or relevance. It’s not always the case that “the way things have always been done” should be discarded without careful consideration.

Our aversion to these sources of uncertainty and the discomfort with ambiguity has a neurological foundation based on our survival instinct to ‘belong’ to a group through consensus and the avoidance of being an outlier. It is a psychological phenomenon related to an individual’s cognitive and emotional response to situations characterised by unpredictability, complexity, or a lack of clear information. While this concept is primarily psychological, its impact is very relevant to the way we make sense of our situation and the resulting decisions that we make in a business environment.

The basis of the predominant or standard approaches to management is grounded in scientific models of the Newtonian era (late 1600s to early 1700s) where the world is deterministic and understood by reductionism. This is a belief that there are independent elements or building blocks of any system such that we can completely understand the system by breaking it down into its smallest elements and describing how these interact. This allows us to control and predict outcomes in an orderly manner based on the laws present. Laplace, the great mathematician of the late 1700s, postulated that no behaviour would be unpredictable if we could know all the underlying equations. This logic and thinking lead managers to seek more and more data to make sense of the situation.

More and more, the world does not operate in this deterministic way anymore, and we are unable to rely on reductionism to reliably make decisions. A shift in our thinking is required if we are to successfully navigate the complexity of the modern world that we live and work in.

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Current Position

The pace of change in today’s world is not only rapidly increasing, but also becoming more complex than ever before. As the environment becomes increasingly turbulent and unpredictable, organisations need to find different ways of coping with new challenges, given that many existing methods were not designed to deal with complex problems. The perceived complexity of a situation or system is relative to the capacity of the organisation to comprehend it. Over the past decade complexity has become an issue that is increasingly felt and discussed within organisations in terms of the challenges people face. In fact, many executives have recognised complexity as the top challenge that they were facing, especially the impacts that is has on their ability to make effective decisions.

Technological geo-political, environmental, ethical, and societal impacts and ways of doing business on a global scale all contribute to the accelerating rate of change and associated complexity that managers face in their day to day working life. Once it was only managers and leaders working on very large projects and programs with multiple stakeholders who experienced complexity. Increasingly however, people working in smaller organisations also experience complexity due to the degree of changes and issues that impact their working environment outside of their own organisation. This includes the boundary of the organisation and what happens to it is not restricted to the physical walls. The study and application of complexity-based approaches are valuable and applicable to a diverse range of organisational situations, regardless of wh