management development? or mengabihkan boreh?...

Tuan Haji Zulkifli Baharom, former Director of MAS Academy and currently adjunct teaching faculty at Kulliyah Ekonomi & Sains Pengurusan at the International Islamic University (UIA) Gombak, Kuala Lumpur, recently invited me to give a guest lecture on 'Management Development: Success Models and Strategies' to his final year economics/business undergrads. I am actually much more comfortable speaking to postgrads/MBA students (heheh) rather than undergrads cos I always worry if they will be able to follow my thoughts and keep up with my bullet-train-like speech and/or decipher my Egyptian Hieroglyphics? hahaha. Or if at all they could make sense of my 'england' (hehehe) and the occasional ramblings in Malay (especially to those foerign students). But, yes, they did ( i hope, i think..hehe). More than 70% of the students were females! OMG...where have all the boys gone? This is the third time Hj Zul has 'punished' me. The first one was with another batch where I was to judge the best entrepreneurial team. Then I was with another group interviewing me (like the LIVE Hardtalk BBCWorld show...hahaha) which made me feel like a celebrity haha. That was mostly on compensation management bla bla bla....

This time around was on management development. Which to me is a 'must have, good to have, nice to have' kinda tingy. Its a luxury for some organisation, a must to others and perhap not necessary or relevant at all to others. More often, in years of corporate life, I observe that people use the term management development, training and education interchangeably to mean one and the same thing. Its not, ok? But don't worry...I won't bore you with the details. I have said this once too often that I am a Henry Mintzberg (HM) convert oh well disciple, if you may...hehe. Now, HM believes that both management and management (development/training/education) are deeply troubled, but neither can be changed without changing the other. He simply found too much of a disconnect between the practice of managing and what went on in classrooms intended to develop managers. Well, just in case I do not confuse the poor undergrads, what I did was to take them through, quickly, Mike Doyles explanation on the meaning and nature of management development, acknowledge their significance to organisational success; contrast piecemeal and open system approach; examine methods, techniques and processes used to develop managers; draw attention to the way management development can be varied to meet special needs and different contexts and in a nutshell, speculate about the future direction of management development...but really...how much can you cover in an hour? heheh

So, much of it I was just sharing my own candid experiences of management development/education of where I was; and because I agreed with HM, much of what I said was propagating his (HM) thinking that we need to redefine management development/education so that we do not overemphasize the science of management while ignoring its art and denigating its craft leaving a distorted impression of its practice. Mintzberg was of the view that we need to get back to a more engaging style of management, to build strong management organizations not bloated share prices, calling for another approach for management development/education whereby practicing managers learn from their own experience, building the art and craft back into management development/education, and into management itself. I don't know if the message came through or not...hahaha. I hope it did (wink) cos the feedback I got was that they enjoyed my presentation(?). For a moment I felt like Robin Williams.....(evil wink).