Investing 102

homemoney to purchasehow This catholic definition of the managerial function greatly simplifies another problem that of choosing the men who are to be trained as managers. If it is restricted to mean top executives only, and if only those intended to reach such a level are designated for training, money will have to be put on certain horses long before they can have shown by their performances what their true form is likely to be. There is also the danger of disheartening those who are not designated. Finally, life is made much harder for the 'crown princes' themselves. Many a junior executive has been picked from among his fellows and sent away to some famous training establishment to learn the art of management, or has been given some carefully designed scheme of job rotation and has found as a result that his superiors suspect him, his colleagues resent him, and that he takes years to become acceptable again. It is far better that the training schemes should take every man involved in the work of management as far up the rungs of the ladder as he can climb, and as far as there are vacancies to fill. This approach will also help in the difficult matter of 'talent spotting'. Particularly in larger firms, and in the absence of very careful searching by senior executives, young men with potential for management may be blushing unseen, and this potential may go undeveloped while the firm is screaming for outside talent in the advertising columns of the press. The wide net of a comprehensive training scheme will help the locating of such men by its careful appraisal and study of those undergoing training. How should the future manager be trained? There are a great variety of methods being used. One firm will collect its staff together for a series of internal courses; another will send individual members to local courses run by technical colleges; a third encourages study in evening classes. A fourth sends men away to residential courses lasting for weeks or months and sometimes farms out men to other companies to acquire experience. Another firm may rely entirely on consultants to give training to its staff, during the course of some assignment which is perhaps introducing a new technique or effecting a reorganization. Yet others may give a young man an assignment as assistant to a senior executive or use 'job rotation' or 'junior boards' as ways of enlarging experience. It is healthy that there should be many different approaches to training. No one standard method can be expected to fit the conditions of all businesses or to satisfy the needs of all levels of managers. The history of management training is very short and the period of experimentation is far from over. Although some principles are emerging, there is as yet no general theory which all rival exponents will accept. to buy a house