Thoughts About Improving Management Training and Development Programs

Management educators, writers and leaders all assert that leading and managing an organization will only get more complex and challenging in the future. Therefore, management development programs must evolve to become even more accessible and relevant. Look for these future enhancements to management training and development programs in universities, colleges and training centers.

Future management training and development programs will:

Include more courses about methods of organization development.
This topic will include understanding various typical problems
that occur in organizations, how to diagnose them, the variety
of interventions to solve the problems, evaluating the interventions
and adjusting policies and procedures to avoid the problems in
the future. (There’s a growing body of information in this
regard.)
Involve well beyond Fortune 500 companies when designing
programs.
Input to programs design will include leaders who are representative
of a broad range of organizations, including small business and
non-profit. These organizations are at the fore-front of commerce
and progress in our society — yet many cannot afford necessary
means to leadership development.
Pilot methods to make management development programs
more accessible.
For example, two introductory or foundation courses will be held
at a lower tuition rate, rather than one highly abstract course
at a higher rate. With wise use of adjuncts or community faculty
(and there are many available), two courses need not cost twice
as much as one.
Keep experienced-based expertise to complement academic
knowledge.
Use of adjuncts or community faculty bring in experienced-based
perspective that strongly complements academic expertise, resulting
in meaningful courses which remain state-of-the-art, yet grounded
in the day-to-day realities of running an organization. Word
quickly spreads among learners about truly meaningful courses,
which, in turn, provokes strong demand for the courses along
with long-lasting stature and credibility for the school.
Go beyond theory and competencies-based models to pilot
more ongoing, process-oriented and reflective approaches.
These approaches reflect the realities of running an organization
while developing the reflective skills to “learn how to
learn.” They spawn the dialogue necessary to retain any
sense of meaning in today’s chaotic and complex world of
management. They also spawn the support necessary for learners
to actually apply what they learn.
Exploit the leverage in leadership development to be gained
from piloting self-organized groups of learners.
These groups provide highly accessible means to ongoing support,
complex problem solving and continuous learning. These groups
can be spawned at low-cost and produce a high volume of “grassroots”
development “courses” where leaders are taught how
to help each other. These groups can complement traditional classroom-based
training methods; they need not replace them.
Pilot means to address increasing burnout and cynicism
in leaders.
Management development does not occur in a safe vacuum devoid
of the challenges of self-management. Burnout and cynicism are
not addressed through intellectual rigor — addressing both requires
highly accessible and ongoing forums for venting, dialogue and
exchange.
Develop evaluation methods to be based more on indicators
of effectiveness in learners’ organizations and less on
learners’ reactions to courses.
Learners are increasingly skeptical of the explosion of seminars
and workshops that promise a great deal, but leave their students
temporarily feeling good. Learners, trainers and developers need
a great deal of help now to learn how to separate style from
substance.
Recognize the value of ongoing support to learners and
leaders.
Particularly in today’s rapidly changing world, it can be tremendously
stressful to lead or manage an organization. In these times of
stress, it’s often quite difficult to intellectually grasp a
vast array of intellectual information, store it away for later
reference, know when to retrieve it and then readily apply it
to the current major challenge in the workplace. A strong foundation
of ongoing support can help learners and leaders to keep an open
mind to new information, explore various new values and viewpoints,
and then have the courage to apply this new information in the
workplace. This strong foundation of ongoing support is every
bit as much a piece of training and development as is a new binder
of new information in a course.

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Management Development

In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs that have posts related to Management Development. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

Go to main Training and Development page.

For the Category of Training and Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.