Management training continues to be a high priority for organisations across all sectors, with the CIPDⁱ highlighting that ‘development of leadership and management skills is seen as most important in meeting business objectives’. Recent government initiatives and sanctions suggest that, as a predominant service sector country, good creative management and leadership is the UK’s only USP beyond 2020.

Latest studies by the CMIⁱⁱ show that by the end of 2006 there were 4.3 million managers in the UK; 2.8 million of them are men and 1.4 million are women. Each manager benefits from an average of 10 days training per year, with an average spend per head of £1477.

Whilst a significant proportion of this investment will undoubtedly be fulfilled through an organisation’s internal resources, it is clear that a significant amount of money is spent each year with consultants, training companies, freelance trainers, business schools, psychologists and coaches.

So what would L&D professionals like to see the market offer? Our own research conducted in 2009 suggests that they:

• Value business relevance highly
• Do not want a generic ‘shop window’ approach to their MDP – sector or department specific training is favoured
• Drive the development requirements via competency frameworks and business strategies
• Prefer blended learning – a mix of trainer-led, e-learning techniques, case studies.
  Note: E-learning, whilst becoming more important as a general tool, is seen as less important for management development.
• Think that measurement of ‘value’ is usually not very well thought through

But what does the market offer the L&D professional? Even a quick Google search for ‘Management Development Programmes’ presents the corporate L&D buyer with a bewildering choice of offerings, some of which are also misleading: a ‘programme’ turns out to be just another open course, advertised at discounted rates.

The market, in other words, is a bit of a mess.

The business schools certainly provide a rigorous academic skills development path. However their programmes are usually either too expensive for the typical corporate budget, or are reserved exclusively for ‘top talent’. Whilst MBAs provide an excellent grounding for running a business, they are often restricted in their ability to develop the behaviours necessary to become a great people manager.

At Matchett, we wholeheartedly agree with Henry Mintzberg’s views expressed in his book Managers Not MBAs. We believe that you don’t become a great manager just by reading a book or attending a training course. Becoming a great manager has always been as much about developing your mindset as your skills. And it is always, always influenced by the culture, strategy and environment of your organisation.

Yet too much of the training market’s offerings are still centred on generic knowledge-based programmes, and have not significantly evolved since the 1980’s. We believe that it’s critical that management development programmes don’t just focus on solving current issues or satisfying today’s client demands. Unless we believe that change is not coming, or our organisation has no future (!), we need to create solutions which anticipate the requirements of the future. Research by the Chartered Management Instituteⁱⁱⁱ makes the following observations about the skills the manager in 2018 will need to possess:

• The working population will be more diverse. Changing expectations of work and the impact of new technologies will require managers and leaders to develop a new range of skills that focus on emotional and spiritual intelligence, judgement and the ability to stimulate creative thinking to improve productivity
• Dealing with these changes will require talented and prudent managers who excel in analysis, evaluation and above all good judgement.
• Permanent, fast and mobile internet connections will be omnipresent, which will in itself introduce challenges for managers and employees as they struggle to analyse and filter the constant stream of information. Learning to manage technology and understanding how to disengage from it will have an increased importance.
• Emotional intelligence and the ability to interact and communicate with others in accordance with their values, as opposed to technical competencies and knowledge, will become more important in the management recruitment process.
• Managers will have to deploy skills in leading and managing [such] virtual teams.
• Successful managers will be those who are more adept at managing distributed tasks and bringing together the achieved results effortlessly to a coherent whole. Strong project management skills will be essential.

In considering the implications of all this research for our own management development programmes, (for which Matchett was identified as a market leader by the IIFL), we have reviewed not only content, but the beliefs and values which underpin our service to clients.

We also believe that management training must be targeted at driving performance improvements for the organisation. To achieve this, it needs to inspire. It needs to be contextual. It needs to be built around the specific needs of the individuals and fully supported by their managers. It needs to be pragmatic and immediately applicable, delivered by people who have done the job, helping organisations meet the challenges of today, and tomorrow.

Our new Mastering Management portfolio has therefore been developed to be:

1. Specific to our client’s goals, values, culture and competencies
2. Built around the needs of learners, acknowledging Generation Y, for successful learning transfer
3. A benchmark for interactive learning – providing managers and leaders with an outstanding learning experience that adds demonstrable, self-evident value to themselves, their direct reports and their organisations
4. Delivering demonstrable value for money
5. Meeting the challenges of today and tomorrow
6. Pragmatic and immediately useable
7. Designed and delivered by people who have done the job
8. Easy to deploy, manage and support
9. Consistent when delivered across global and/or varied organisations

If you like what you’re hearing and think we should be talking, please contact us.

ⁱ CIPD L&D Survey 2009
ⁱⁱ Source: managers.org.uk
ⁱⁱⁱ Management Futures 2018 Research, CMI