THE PRINCIPLES OF ICOM’S APPROACH

The primary aims of ICOM’s approach is to create programmes which have:

Relevance to the organisation.  The learning processes should reflect the realities of the organisation and the participants’ workplaces, the problems and challenges being faced and the themes chosen by senior managers as vehicles for change to achieve the vision of the future for the organisation.

Relevance to the individual.  Managers learn best when training is seen to be relevant to their daily experiences and to contribute to improving their individual performance.  Training should not be seen as an isolated occurrence but as part of an integrated career development structure, which clearly identifies the social/managerial as well as the technical/professional requirements and stresses the value of continuous improvement.  Competencies required for organisational and individual requirements should be clearly defined and programmes designed to fill gaps between current and required levels of competence.

Cross-functional dimensions.  Many management problems are caused by the inability to manage effectively across departmental and organisational boundaries.  Management development must feature inter-disciplinary processes and encourage participants to take a broad cross-organisational view.  For example, support functions like maintenance, finance and HR, have internal customers (e.g. line managers).  How these interfaces are managed is vital to overall effectiveness, as is how organisations manage their supply chains and customers.

Bias for action.  Organisational effectiveness is measured by results achieved. Development programmes must therefore feature taking action and implementing change. This is not to discount acquiring new knowledge and becoming more capable at diagnosis and analysis.  These are also an essential part of our programmes.  But the key element is taking action to improve performance, reflecting on the experience and learning from this.

Emphasis on self-development.  The programme should create an environment which optimises the opportunities for learning but places the responsibility for grasping these opportunities on the individual participants.  To assist this process the programme will feature learning how to learn.

Transfer of learning.  Traditional management development processes have often failed to bridge the gap between the programme and the workplace.  Action Learning seeks to bridge this gap at every opportunity using a range of learning events such as projects, assignments, learning contracts and learning log books and by encouraging participants to recognise work place experiences as learning opportunities.  This is the key to the learning process – for managers to recognise that every situation provides a learning opportunity.  The process helps managers to learn how to learn and provides them with a powerful tool for their ongoing development.

Projects.  One of the best forms of learning is to work on projects which are, in their own right, significant to the organisation and its departments.  This provides stimulus to the learning process as well as short-term benefits to the organisation.

Social process.  Managers bring a range of knowledge, experience and ideas to the programme and they are encouraged to share them with each other.  They are also encouraged to support their colleagues through the learning processes and by questioning and challenging ideas.  This process helps participants to develop the managerial skills of giving and receiving constructive feedback and of acting as coach and mentors to others.