That's a great point elchwa.

Teacher training and professional development workshops very often do send teachers straight back into their companies/organisations with a mindset that they're are right and the organisations they work for a wrong. 

Similarly, marketing departments, sales departments, and middle-management tend to see teachers as irritating pests that come and go.  I've seen middle management give great speeches thanking effective sales and customer services and not mentioning academic teams at all.

It does seem Academics and Business are at direct odds at times, doesn't it.  But it shouldn't be, and while educators can't directly change the attitude of the other departments, they can change their own attitude (and perhaps indirectly end up in all departments getting along and being more successful).

• So, how do we better educate teachers/ourselves then?
• What should teacher training programmes change/adjust to help teachers become more commercially sensible?

Suggestions welcome!

It's more than just management.  As a Director of Studies you actually need to 'middleman' 4 main different groups of people (more than this actually, but these 4 tends to have the more conflicting aims, in my experience):

• Customers (That is, the students, but they often have 'customer' needs that are quite different from student needs, and both the DoS and the teachers need to become more aware of these needs).
• Teachers (While teachers need jobs, companies also need teachers, and the DoS and other teachers can make a huge difference in teacher happiness and retention).
• Sales Staff (Often thought of as having the same aims as management, Sales Staff actually have a much narrower focus.  'The sale' is often their entire focus.  That is, they want to get money in and they don't really care about money going out).
• Managers (There seems to be more to this than people realise at first.  Unlike Sales Staff, Management has to put a big focus on keeping customers happy... and just keeping customers.  They have to ensure operating procedures are in place to make things run smoothly.  They have to manage resources, staff in general, expenditure, etc, etc.  Managing all this, even where there are multiple managers, is actually impossible, so it becomes all about the operating procedures.  What that means is, their main focus is more often than not on procedures, policies, and reports!)

Different groups of people naturally results in misunderstandings and people (thinking) they are working at cross purposes.  Truth is, imagine an education company...

• with no teachers.
• with no cleaners.
• with no sales staff.
• with no managers.
• with no accounting clerks.
• with no customer service representatives.

All of them are absolutely essential to an effective operation, so they all need to understand each other.

Should we, the DoS and the teachers, take the first step in trying to understand?  Probably not, but if they won't and we won't then things will never improve.  So my suggestion is not to help them understand education, and not to 'deal with the management', but to: 

Start off by helping the teachers to understand the other departments.

When they see our interest in their work, and when our interest in their work makes things run more efficiently and effectively, they'll be much more likely to take an interest in our work.

(nb. This is all in hindsight, and as a DoS I never took this approach myself... but next time I return to DoS work, I intend on trying).