Hello All,

Yesterday I had a request from a colleague and friend who works for Beximco, a Bangladeshi pharmaceuticals company. He was asking me about how to write a business plan for a case he was working on and also he wanted to know about productivity, especially operational, human and marketing.

This question highlights two factors:

1. The level of knowledge within the management population of growing economies is lacking with many gaps.
2. The desire to learn about productivity in operations and the human side of it is quite strong.

Point 1 is not only restricted to less developed economies and the businesses coming out of there. In a recent assignment I completed the management populaton I worked with indicated that I was the first to provide any management training in several years, for which they were very appreciative.

Point 2 is an area where my colleagues counterparts in the West are very much in the dark about too. Over the last decade of working in the field of operational productivity improvement I have seen very little evidence of commercial acumen within a vast majority of client management. Most management I found were so 'busy' trying to get the job done that productivity and the implications of costs were nowhere on their radar.

So the education and training of management above and beyond what is taught at business school still lies within the development plans set out by companies for their management. The question is what is included in those development plans for people? It is not just about getting the job done, but  a demonstrable knowledge of a whole host of skills. Here are some which I think are valuable in todays corporate world:

1. The strategy and goals of the business
2. Personal goals and deliverables
3. Key Performance Indicators
4. Bottom-line results
5. Project management skills
6. People management skills
7. Presentation skills
8. Report / business plan writing skills
9. Communication skills
10. Leadership skills

These are only a handful of items to be considered in terms of moulding management into super-managers and should be evaluated annually to track progress and ability.

Management trainng is a crucial driver of business success and it should not be left to chance, it should planned and executed effectively. By doing this not only super-managers can be primed for succession but also weaker and less able individuals can be weeded out.

The request from my colleague and friend raised an interesting scenario for the future.

If the managers of companies in developing economies are seeking out knowlede and training, then where does that leave the managers of companies in Europe and America who have highly sophisticated HR and training divisions within their businesses?

I feel that the next generation of Lee Iaccocas and Jack Welch and the likes will come from  the East

Shah Alam