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The focus of this chapter is on the responses that individual children make to their encounters with the core skill of reading in primary school. The interview data presented here focus on reading and meaning making in children who are considered poor readers by school authorities. Data were drawn from both age groups of children, and there are differences in how children respond to reading based on age; older children show evidence of having a more fixed reading identity than younger children, where space to manoeuvre is still felt. The first part of the chapter presents findings on the meanings children make of reading identities in school, where they work primarily with constructs of ‘being’ intelligent or not. Data, in the form of quotes and fieldnotes, present children’s resistance to reading and to the reading identities they are assigned at school.

This quote, from one of the chairmen interviewed for this research, shows in essence what almost all of them expressed as the key issue for effectiveness of the board and for top- level value creation in their organizations. The research indicates in favour of having a pair of leaders at the top working together — where both leaders are leveraging from each other’s core skills and competencies. This is the ‘Tandem’ at the top. This implies that they work together but have chosen different roles and have agreed on a division of key tasks between them.

Certain key skills and attitudes are essential for effective influencing. An understanding of these skills and attitudes, together with an awareness of your own ability in the areas, is helpful for successful influencing in today’s complex organisational environment.

It is commonly argued that young people’s transitions from school to work in the UK have changed radically since the middle 1970s, with the result that the experience of cohorts today differs markedly from the generations growing up in the 1950s and 1960s (see for example, Nagel and Wallace, 1997; Roberts, 1984; Bynner, 1991; Furlong and Cartmel, 1997; and for a moderating view Vickerstaff, 2003). In particular, the fact that most young people in the earlier period left education after the compulsory school leaving age (15 and then 16 in 1972), and went into a labour market where jobs were relatively plentiful, contrasts sharply with the 86 per cent of 16-year-olds who now stay on in some form of education or training (DfES, 2002). It has been an aim of successive governments to encourage the numbers staying on in education and training after the school leaving age, and this has been combined since the late 1970s with the argument that compulsory schooling has been failing to provide young people with the key skills needed to make them employable. As a recent government document asserted: Employers have consistently said that too many young people are not properly prepared for the world of work … In particular, they may lack skills such as communication and teamwork, and attributes such as self-confidence and willingness to learn that are of growing importance across a range of jobs. (DfES, 2003, p. 78)

The purpose of this book is fourfold: to save us time, to reassure us, to allow us to manage change and finally, to implement success. This Chapter focuses on all four by summarising the skills, techniques and tools which allow us to put the Model into practice.

Founded in 1984 by David Richards and Ian Parry, respectively Chairman and Commercial Director, the company has had a continuing record of profitability and increasing turnover. However, as the current Chairman has stated: ‘In those formative years were a period when we tried our hand at a wide range of business initiatives. In hindsight, we were like so many new ventures, and often failed to focus on our core skills’.