Future leaders

The difficulties of recruiting skilled people are well known. Less well documented are the fatal weaknesses in organisations' existing workforces. According to a recent survey by the Institute of Directors (IoD), some 47% of directors reported employees lack the skills to do their jobs to the right level. And the biggest deficit is in management and leadership abilities. IoD points out the implications: "Such deficiencies are damaging in their own right and are likely to carry myriad implications for the practical running of an organisation… a lack of management skills may exacerbate and magnify the effect of other skills weaknesses by impairing managers' ability to leverage and develop the skills of other employees and to manage their performance effectively." Employers clearly believe that this shortfall will impact on their businesses' ability to capitalise on any economic recovery. So what's being done? After the latest recession, there is a pronounced new willingness to train. Some 94% of organisations are currently investing and management training is definitely in the spotlight. As part of government's newfound enthusiasm for manufacturing, business secretary Vince Cable recently announced £50m funding from a Growth and Innovation Fund (GIF) to tackle skills shortages. Currently details are scant but £20m a year is apparently destined to support match funding for leadership and management training for SMEs. That won't go far, but it's a fair indication that management development is rising on boardroom and political agendas. This has not escaped the attention of the universities. In the early 70s there were only two UK business schools. Today, over one hundred provide a mix of company-specific training or undergraduate, post-graduate and professional courses. Leading lights as well as less well-known organisations offer programmes promising significant benefits for businesses and individuals, though they vary enormously in content and price. And it's not always obvious which 'flavour' will give you what you want. Let's take a look at the pros and cons of some of them. It's not possible to examine more than a few; there are over a thousand from the UK business schools alone. The Financial Times (FT) produces an excellent international ranking annually ranging from full-time MBAs to two-week improvement courses. Even this is far from exhaustive, although – since its survey is based on the opinions of actual alumni – it does provide some fascinating insights. Top of the tree is probably the Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA). One gem from the FT: if you want big money, take your EMBA at Kellogg/Hong Kong Business School (average earnings three years after graduation: $392,076). In comparison, in the UK, you can expect a mere $185,712 from Oxford Saïd and a positively humble $184,488 from London Business School or $140,980 from Cranfield. Practically, however, few businesses will consider losing a key player to a full-time MBA. Many universities offer a modular alternative: Oxford Saïd's, for example, is identical in content but broken into 16 week-long modules taken over 18 months which are "designed to help senior professionals realise their potential whilst delivering international general management competence to their organisations". EMBAs provide superb opportunities to absorb entrepreneurial ideas and test new concepts. With, however, fees at top UK business schools peaking at £52,000, EMBAs are probably reserved for nurturing one or two individuals destined to shape the company's future – if you can keep up with those salary expectations. More financially manageable – especially for larger numbers – are part-time open programmes pitched at accelerating development of leadership and management skills at varying organisational levels. Most have short residential periods and provide support and mentoring as students apply their learning back in the business. Cranfield School of Management, for example, teaches the Business Leaders' programme to senior executives (£13,000), while its Advanced Development Programme prepares high potential senior managers for business leadership roles (£14,950). Some institutions have open programmes that combine a specialised manufacturing and engineering bias with generally recognised qualifications. The Manufacturing Institute's (TMI) new Manufacturing Management Development Programme is rooted in the long-standing Professional Diploma in Manufacturing. It is split into three modules aimed at increasing personal effectiveness – leadership and managing change; developing others; and developing yourself. All have firm vocational leanings and are open only to those with several years' experience in manufacturing (although they don't demand prior academic qualifications). The programme relies heavily on practical industrial examples and live case studies to drive the learning back into the sponsoring workplace. Students are required to have a mentor from their company acting as a link between learning and the workplace and helping to guide them through the modules and written assessments. The student undertakes approximately 25 hours of study at home with a 2,000-2,500 word assignment to be completed for each module. Successful candidates can progress to the Certificate in Manufacturing Management, the Diploma in Manufacturing and eventually to TMI's own MSc in Manufacturing Leadership, accredited by Lancaster University Management School. The course design has been based on manufacturers' feedback and – at £2,000 – is something of a bargain. At a more advanced level, WMG (formerly Warwick Manufacturing Group) offers post-graduate courses to masters and engineering doctorate level on a part-time basis. Founded by Professor Lord Bhattacharyya in 1980, WMG – a department of the University of Warwick – occupies an unusual position between academia and industry, aiming to bring academic rigour to industrial practice. Delegates attend residential modules and those with a first degree can achieve their masters in three years by completing 10 modules plus a work-based project. Total cost is £20,885. WMG alumnus Tim Roberts – recently awarded its MSc in Engineering Business Management – has some interesting insights into the efficacy of this approach. Starting as a Rolls-Royce (RR) apprentice 30 years ago, he now works for its Gas Turbine Supply Chain. In the mid-90s he achieved WMG's diploma, a necessary foundation for the MSc. While working on secondment to an RR programme, his temporary manager spotted that his potential matched a perceived need within the business. At the annual personal development review he suggested studying for a masters. "In RR, it's always the manager who promotes this kind of thing, not HR," explains Roberts. "It's better that way – they support you. You are going to be off-site for 10 weeks and without support from your immediate manager you will struggle." Interestingly, WMG was Roberts' own choice – his sponsor had suggested following his own steps with an MBA from Manchester. "But most of that was handled through distance learning. I'd never done that and I felt unsure about the lack of structure." The programme spread over two years, with another year to write the dissertation. That was the toughest part. He had never written an academic document before and it took fierce self-discipline to come home and start writing after a day's work. WMG assigns a supervisor to visit students and support them by phone and email. Roberts believes it made a critical difference to his own work. He values the multi-company nature of the programme highly; it brought him far more experience than he could ever have gained from company-specific courses. He rubbed shoulders with delegates from the UK's leading engineering companies, comparing different approaches to similar issues and arguing the toss each evening long after the close of formal teaching. "You don't just want RR's view on things – there are other people doing a lot of good things and you need exposure to that. How do you share good practice if you are all from the same business?" He was particularly impressed seeing how organisations like Toyota and Nissan not only make changes but sustain them – an interest that eventually formed the core of his dissertation. Now back in a quality role, he is using it to help influence his own department and hopes eventually to contribute to changes in the wider organisation. He has only one reservation – he thinks it is a challenge for any business school, not just WMG, to make sure their course material is uniformly up to date. In some areas, particular in lean techniques, WMG was well in advance; in others, he was encountering 'new' methods established in RR for some time. So what did the whole experience give him? "There's no Eureka moment – but there's a completed jigsaw that comes from what you learn at WMG, what you learn at work and what you find out from other members on the course," he explains. "And when it's all fitted together, you use it back at work to improve the way things are done. It certainly worked for me." Roberts makes a strong case for the open, multi-company course but he is probably going against a growing trend for customised, single-company programmes. Virtually every business school and university designs courses to foster and develop organisations' own management cadres. They include London Business School (Vodafone among others), WMG (AstraZeneca, PZ Cussons and Syngenta), University of Northampton (Norbert Dentressangle) and Cranfield whose Professor Mike Sweeney explains how its version – known as Action Workshops – fit into the general training picture. "Companies generally contact us because they want help with a specific problem. The programmes are customised to whatever action the company is striving to take, whether strategically or through tactical management activity." Recent programmes include supporting a business whose products are coming to the end of their life and needs ways of evaluating a strategic plan and a complementary manufacturing strategy; a multi-site company which wants best practices that will benefit both individual sites and the collective business; and one aiming to develop its managers to lead it in continuous improvement and lean working. The programmes take many shades from senior management to team leaders and operators. Sweeney says there is no standard template. Each programme needs careful preparation, and demands input and involvement from the highest level of the company. Usually someone like the group manufacturing director acts as sponsor and works in confidence with Cranfield to share goals and distil them into course content. "Manufacturing today is often loath to allow people to be away for too long," says Sweeney. "So these programmes mainly run over two intensive days. In essence, it is about targeting a particular action in the organisation and enabling the people within it to carry out actions or effect change. It is a high impact, concentrated involvement with the company targeted at a specific issue." So what does it all boil down to? Companies need to ask themselves a few key questions before they even look at the first prospectus. Do you want to clone what you already have? Do you want to turn out a few all-rounders capable of thinking outside the company box to take your business in new directions? Or do you want to build a new cadre capable of executing existing strategies? How many people are you planning to train and how long can you afford to release them from the day job? Is it more cost effective to install them on existing 'open' courses or will you do better to buy something specifically to fit your business and timescale. Is it for everyone on the management ladder or just for those transferring from technical to managerial positions? And finally, just how much do you have to spend? Each answer will narrow the range of effective programmes. None of it will be cheap, with or without any external funding. You pays your money and takes your choice.