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Significance Of The Accelerated Experience Method
Customized
Management Development:
The significance of the Accelerated Experience Method™ should be
evaluated in two
ways:
first, as a technique to assist managers to learn how to
perform specific jobs; and, second, as a means of improving on
experience as a teacher.
The
practical
value of the Accelerated Experience Method™
is that is a precise
and powerful method to assist managers to learn how to handle the
problems and opportunities they are likely to face in the jobs they
are expected to perform.
The
method stands in sharp contrast to generalized education and training
programs that teach concepts and theories but are not concerned with
the day-to-day practice of management.
Equally important, it rejects the notion that managers can
increase their
effectiveness by
learning general principles that are unrelated to the specific
jobs they must perform.
The Accelerated Experience Method™ is designed to replace “off
the shelf,” “one size fits all” development programs with
customized programs that are job-specific and industry-specific.
The
method is consistent with the main conclusion of Professor Gabarro’s
research on management succession, namely, that “the all purpose
general manager who can be slotted into just any organization,
function or industry exists only in management textbooks.”
It agrees with his findings that job and industry experience
are important and “are not to be ignored in succession planning.”
It seeks, therefore, to be precise in developing managers for
the specific jobs they are expected to perform.
The
Accelerated Experience Method™ gets its power by using the successful
experience of managers to identify the problems and opportunities
other managers should be prepared to handle.
It recognizes, moreover, that to teach managers precisely what
they need to know to be successful, even the size of the organization
must be taken into account, as the programs for publishers of large
newspapers and small newspapers demonstrate.
Improving
on Experience:
The Accelerated Experience Method™ accepts as truisms the
statements that “experience is a manager’s best teacher” and
that there is “no substitute for experience.”
It recognizes, however, that ordinary experience is an
imperfect teacher that leaves most manager “too soon old and too
late smart.”
It seeks, therefore, to improve on a manager’s own experience
by using a new kind of experience that is a faster and better teacher.
Its
basic objective is to assist managers to gain the “right” kind of
experience—the kind they need to prepare themselves for the jobs
they are expected to perform.
It seeks to minimize, but not entirely avoid, the lessons unsuccessful
experience
has to teach.
Its purpose is not to teach managers how not to
manage.
It does, however, use the experience of “turnaround”
managers to teach managers how to avoid mistakes that could lead to
their failure.
The
Accelerated Experience Method™ improves on successful experience as a
teacher in three important ways.
First, it teaches managers before they are tested on the
job.
It helps them learn what they need to know to succeed before
they are put in a position where they might fail.
A manager’s ordinary experience does it the other way around;
it tests managers before it teaches them.
Testing
managers is an effective way to get their attention, however.
For this reason, the Accelerated Experience Method™ uses this
same technique.
It confronts managers with problems and opportunities and
“scores” them on the way their decisions and actions would have
worked out in the actual situation, before they discover what
would have been the best way to handle the situation they found
themselves in.
the main difference is that ordinary experience subjects them
to the risk of ruining their careers, whereas the Accelerated
Experience Method™ only lets them risk losing a contest in the
classroom.
The
second way the Accelerated Experience Method™ improves on ordinary
experience is by assisting managers to learn much faster then
their own experience on the job can teach them.
Ordinary experience is a painfully slow teacher because much
that takes place on the job is routine, repetitive or trivial.
Few managers experience more than 40 or 50 significant new
problems or opportunities in a year.
Most have considerably fewer learning experiences, especially
after their first year on the job.
The
Accelerated Experience Method™ is able to reproduce and compress into
one week as man as 150 of the significant situations successful
managers have experienced on the job.
Thus, managers are able to get in one week the decision-making
experience they would need three years or more to get on the job.
This is illustrated by the comment of Roger G. McGruder,
Managing Editor/News for the Detroit Free Press who observed
after participating in the program for publishers of large, daily
newspapers:
“What we did was experience six years in the life of a
newspaper, all wrapped up in a computer program, in five days.”
In
order to assure that managers will learn what experience has to teach
them, the Accelerated Experience Method™ reproduces all five steps in
the learning process managers experience on the job.
Only two of these steps are used in conventional management
education programs [i.e. (1) identifying and analyzing a problem and
opportunity and (2) deciding on a course of action].
The last three steps are crucial to a manager’s development,
however.
Teaching managers without using the last three steps is like
teaching baseball players, tennis players, and golfers how to improve
their swing without letting them know what happened to the ball after
they hit it.
These steps include: (3) obtaining “feedback” on the
outcome of each decision, (4) “living” with the consequence of
each decision and action—or inaction, and (5) evaluating the impact
of each decision on results which is referred to as decision analysis.
The fifth step is particularly important because, if managers
do not analyze the impact of their decision on results, they cannot
learn how to avoid repeating their mistakes.
All they can do is practice their mistakes which slow learners
sometimes do even on the job.
In requiring managers to take time out from the competition
periodically to analyze their decisions, the Accelerated Experience
Method™ is more likely than ordinary experience to assure that managers
learn from their mistakes as well as their successes.
The
third way Accelerated Experience Programs™ improve on ordinary
experience is by
giving managers an opportunity to experience the future.
Ordinary experience is a backward looking teacher that know
nothing about the future.
It only teaches managers the lessons they needed to learn
yesterday.
And, as we have already seen, it encourages managers to
continue to do what they learned to do in the past.
The Accelerated Experience Method™, in contrast, attempts to
teach managers what they will
need to know tomorrow, particularly how to manage change.
Tom
Peters, of “In Search of Excellence” fame, says there are no
longer any excellent companies.
No company is safe, he says:
Too much is changing.” To compete successfully in the future,
he contends companies must have “leadership that loves change
instead of fighting it.” As Horace McDowell, CEO of Parkin-Elmer,
points out, however, everyone “agrees on the need for change but
getting it into the nervous system is a different matter.” And as
Jeremy Main observed in Fortune Magazine, “The task is to
train managers to deal with constant, rapid change.
Nobody yet has any idea how you
go about doing that.”
The
Accelerated Experience Method™, on the contrary, uses the experience of
technological innovators to assist both experienced and inexperience
managers to learn how to manage changes they will have to deal with in
the future.
In the newspaper publishers’ program, for instance,
participants must decide what to do about electronic pagination, a new
method of making-up a newspaper by computer.
Electronic pagination is one of several technological
developments that may change the way newspapers are produced
in the future.
Although most newspapers do not plan to adopt electronic
pagination until the technology is perfected and its economics are
improved, one technologically advanced newspaper is planning to
introduce electronic pagination as soon as possible.
The
technical, financial and management studies of that newspaper and the
experience it has had to date are used in the newspaper programs to
assist new publishers to acquire the knowledge and skills they will
need in order to decide when to adopt the new technology and how to
handle the problems and opportunities it will create, if—and
when—their newspapers adopt it.
By using the experience of technological innovators,
Accelerated Experience™ assists other managers to learn what their own
experience cannot teach them.
Thus, it improves on ordinary experience as a teacher.
Computer-based
Management Simulations Compared:
The Accelerated Experience Method™, as has been explained,
achieves its effectiveness by linking the case method and the computer
in a way that greatly improves the teaching and learning process.
This improvement could not be achieved by either the case
method or the computer alone.
Future improvements undoubtedly will be made by the computer
because it has the potential to revolutionize education and training
just as it is revolutionizing communications and production.
The computer has not yet significantly changed the way managers
learn, however, because it has only been used to doing what is easy
for computers to do; namely, manipulate numbers.
Computers have not been used extensively to teach managers how
to manage people.
But management is the art of getting results through others.
If people are left out, the essence of management is left out.
What is being taught is budgeting, financial planning or
economics, but it is not what managers, especially general managers
and chief executive officers, most need to know to perform their jobs
effectively.
We should not be surprised, therefore, that computers alone
have not yet significantly changed the way managers are taught or
learn.
This
is not to say that computer-based management simulations and exercises
have not made a contribution to management education and training.
Their contribution has been limited, however, largely to the
quantitative tasks of management.
The most widely used computer-based simulations are business
games and they are games without people.
Exceedingly few are concerned with the day to day practice of
management.
Fewer still deal with the functions performed by general
managers and chief executive officers.
None, to my knowledge, reproduces all the significant
problems—financial and non-financial—handled by successful
managers over a period of days, weeks, or years.
None, therefore, teaches managers what experience in a specific
job teaches them.
Computer-based
management simulations, nevertheless, have some of the same features
as the Accelerated Experience Method™.
Many use competition to stimulate interest.
Many also are designed to assist managers to improve their
decision-making skills, particularly their financial skills.
And most computer-based programs give participants
“feedback” on their decisions.
All too often, however, the feedback participants get is based
on theorectical models.
These models reflect someone’s perception of the way business
“ought” to work—not the way it actually works.
Some management simulations create the impression, for
instance, that if you spend enough money on research and development,
you will gain product leadership; if you spend enough money on
advertising, you will increase sales and gain market share; and if you
spend enough money on training, you will have more productive
employees.
Perhaps this is the way business “ought” to operate, but it
is no the way it actually operates.
The
danger with computer-based simulations that use theoretical models is
that they will teach managers what “ain’t so,” and will leave
them unprepared to cope with the real problems they must handle on the
job in a highly complex and rapidly changing world.
The only way to avoid this danger is to program the computer to
deal with real problems and to provide feedback based on what actually
happened in real situation.
This, of course, is what the computer is programmed to do under
the Accelerated Experience Method™.
A
Renaissance In Management Development:
The “sink or swim” method of management development is
responsible for rising failure rates among new general managers and
for increased recruiting of outsiders for key management positions.
It is no longer realistic for companies to expect their top
management candidates to learn by trial and error on the job.
Their experience is too slow and unreliable to be relied on to
teach them how to perform their jobs successfully.
The
trends that are threatening the careers of top management candidates
and the competitive strength of more and more companies will not be
reversed, however, unless our companies give their top management
candidates a great deal more help in learning their jobs than they
have given them in the past.
What is needed is a genuine renaissance in management
development.
But
what will bring this renaissance about?
Why will companies that have neglected the development of their
top management candidates for years suddenly change their behavior?
Why will companies decide that developing insiders is better
than recruiting outsiders?
There
are no clear answers to these questions, but there are at least two
possibilities.
One is that companies will recognize that developing their
managers, particularly their top managers, is essential to their
competitive health.
Most companies are acutely aware of the competitive threat that
faces them.
Many are beginning to teach their managers competitive and
marketing strategy.
Many of the are establishing competitor intelligence functions.
Al that remains is for them to recognize that assisting their
top managers
to learn how to perform their jobs more effectively is a key to their
competitive strength.
Oddly
enough, German and Japanese companies operating the U.S. may alert
them to the competitive advantage to be gained by improved training of
their managers and employees.
German and Japanese companies, which do not recruit outsiders
for top management positions, recognize that their training programs
are an important source of competitive advantage.
Indeed, their companies have been running advertisements in the
U.S. press to inform their customers and the public of the role
training plays in their competitive strategies.
The
U.S. subsidiary of Siemens, the giant German electronics company,
recently ran a series of ads in newspapers such as The New York
Times and magazines such as Business Week to announce that
training “assures our position as a world class company.”
Under headlines such as “Training—The Competitive Edge”
and “Training
to Win the World Market,” Siemens described its comprehensive
management and technical training programs and advertised that,
“Hundreds
of our employees travel abroad every year for advanced courses that
run from one week to a year or two.
In short, constant specialized training is one of the ways we
are fulfilling our commitment to keep our customers and employees
working smarter, not just harder.
A sure way to keep us all ahead of the competition in a rapidly
changing, increasingly tough and complex high technology workplace.”
At
the opening of its automobile plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, Mazda
Motor company’s president, Kenichi Yamamoto, announced that Mazda
had “launched what my be the most painstaking recruitment and
training program in automotive history.” He stated:
“Without the right people, our highly automated $550 million
U.S. plant wouldn’t be worth a dime.” The advertisement explained:
An
intensive five-stage screening process was used to select 3,500
workers from a mass of 96,500 applicants.
Those hired then participated in a rigorous 10-week training
course, followed by off-line training with a team leader.
Throughout, the new workforce was introduced to the Mazda Way
of Open Management and Worker Participation.
The
advertisement concluded:
“When completed, this exhaustive process will have cost a
great deal of time and money.
Yet we believe it will pay dividends in quality and
productivity worth far more.”
The
second catalyst that may stimulate a renaissance in management
development is recognition by boards of directors and chief executive
officers that there is a faster and better way to develop their top
managers than by trial and error on the job.
If board members and CEOs become convinced that their key
managers can be developed in a fraction of the time now required by
ordinary experience, a great many companies will embrace the new
methods.
If they believed their general management candidates can learn
in one week to handle the problems and opportunities successful
managers needed three years to learn in similar jobs, there is little
doubt that companies will give them that training.
If they believed their top management candidates can gain in
five or six weeks the decision-making experience they would need ten
to twelve years to learn in functional job-rotations assignments, most
companies will give them that training.
If they believed their managers can learn in a few days how to
handle the changes they will face in the future, most companies will
train them to manage these changes.
Only
three Accelerated Experience Programs™ have been developed to date,
however.
And they have been customized for newspaper publishers and
advertising agency general managers and managing directors.
Therein lies the rub.
The production of additional customized programs is not a
trivial task, even though it is manageable.
Companies and trade associations may be reluctant, however, to
invest the resources that are required to produce customized programs
for their managers, until there is more proof that the methodology is
really effective.
If they wait, progress will be slow and the renaissance may be
a long time in coming.
The
danger to American industry is that their world competitors may adopt
the new instructional technology first.
German and Japanese companies already consider management
training to be an important part of their competitive strategy.
They already are spending significant amounts of money on
training.
And they are quick to adopt new technologies which they believe
will give them a competitive edge.
As
Lester E. Thurow, Dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, has
pointed out:
“For
two or three decades after World War II, America had effortless
technological leadership—it had no peers either as an inventor or a
user of new technologies.
Now that era is gone, too.
America faces foreign competition; Japan, West German, South
Korea, Taiwan, that are certainly America’s equal when it comes to
rapidly employing new technologies.”
For
a variety of reasons, as Thurow explains, American managers
“procrastinate, waiting for it to become clear which technology is
best.
By the time the answer is clear, foreign firms may have a two
or three year lead in understanding and employing the new
technologies.”
There
is nothing about the Accelerated Experience Method™ that others cannot
duplicate.
If American companies wait until the potential of the new
method is clear beyond doubt, our world competitors “may have a two
or three year lead in understanding and employing” the new
technology.
If that happens, the renaissance in management development may
not take place in the United States and our worldwide competition may
discover another “sure way” to keep “ahead of the competition in
a rapidly changing, increasingly tough and complex high technology
workplace.”
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