Developing Managers
The executive vice presidents of two corporations were exchanging ideas concerning the efficiency of management education and development within their companies. Both had had considerable experience with various types of formal training. They had experimented over a 10-year period with sending selected people to universities for both individual courses and degree work. They had extensive and costly internal programs under their personal guidance, directed by their chief training officers. At one time or another, representatives of the various approaches to management theory were employed to present a series of conferences and seminars in a program and make individual speeches on the subject.
"I must say," said Michael, "that our experience may be summed up as very expensive in time and fees and no improvement in management skills has appeared beyond those that one would see in any able manager who is ambitious. It is not that the 'trainers' were incompetent, or uninteresting. It is not that they didn't have something to say. In fact, our people had a good time and the reports they turned in were highly complimentary. But I really don't think we made a nickel."
"A year ago I would have said the same thing," observed Jim. "We had the same results, thouah we fried everything. And the funny thing about it was tha- our oeftple thought every program was great. They were unable to discern quality and productivity. I guess this was because they could see little relevance of anything to their jobs. But we changed that."
"What did you do?" inquired Michael.
"One thing we did was to stop these, programs that wander all over human experience, on the one hand, and on the other we dropped those interminable lectures. We decided to identify a particular aspect of managing that was rather poorly practiced. For instance, we thought our coaching of subordinates was being neglected, or at least poorly done. We called together a group ol department heads, explained why we wanted a better coaching job done, explained how to go about it, and asked them all to confer with their managers concerning the need for coaching individual supervisors, the techniques to be used, and a later review of results. This way, we thought we had a direct line on a management need, and we insisted that the line managers do the training. On the whole, we feel we have got something that will work."
"I see," said Michael, who was now in a thoughtful mood. "It is not enough for top managers to show an interest in the development program. They actually have to train their own subordinates."
"That is right," concluded Jim. "If there is to be training, we have to do it. The manager is the great teacher in organized enterprise."
Q1. Can any manager be "trained" to manage better?
Q2. What should be done to get the most out of university programs?
Q3. Briefly describe your learning philosophy. If you were the director of training and development in a large company, what kind of an approach would you take?
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