A “New Manager” Programme Designed to Deliver

In spite of the trend to delegate the training and development of new managers to line managers, new managers often arrive on short management programmes without clearly formulated learning needs. If business schools are to deliver significant learning experiences, they must find ways to help course members identify these needs, and they must design programmes with the flexibility to address them. Uses the Developing Managerial Skills Programme developed at Ashridge, with its learning needs audit, live management exercise and self‐development plan to illustrate a successful design. Explains the design rationale and describes the programme, using a model of learning with seven stages:equilibrium/diagnosis/awareness/resolving/reshaping/experimentation/feedback/integration. The programme is evaluated by a survey of past participants.