New Zealand needs more skilled, competent and innovative managers to improve the nation’s economic performance and its social well-being. And at the end of last year the New Zealand Institute of Management delivered briefing paper to the Government suggesting seven steps it could take to start the reform process.
“There are strong indications that we are failing to develop and apply management skills as effectively as we might,” says the Briefing Paper’s author, Doug Matheson, chairperson of the NZIM National Board.
New Zealand, he argues, is not alone in this. “A number of other countries are reviewing and rethinking” how they can lift management performance – in both the public and the private sector.
NZIM recommends that:
1.Education in management and leadership should have higher profile in the secondary curriculum, and business programmes should be encouraged as key subject area. NZIM wants to work with the Ministry of Education to develop this proposition.
2.Management skills should be embedded in all trades and professional qualifications.
3.The development of coherent set of standards and qualifications related to effective management performance be given priority by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), and if necessary dedicated funding be made available to effect the development.
4.The Management Development Advisory Council be invited to review and report to the Minister and the Tertiary Education Commission on specific changes required to ensure management education will meet the needs of dynamic, innovative and growing economy.
5.Subsidies and incentives be made available for variety of on-the-job learning and assessment processes that show effective improvement in management capability.
6.Longitudinal research into management performance be given priority by the Foundation for Research Science and Technology (FRST).
7.A delegation be sent to England to discuss the British Council for Excellence report, its research base, and its recommendations, to identify effective strategic applications for New Zealand. The British Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership last year produced report summarising extensive research into the state of management and leadership in England.
The Briefing Paper suggests the Government should give positive lead to the required changes by shifting the current focus away from structured education as the main (or even only) way of developing and maintaining good managers.
The lead can be given “first by making policy statements that articulate new approach” and second by “changing funding priorities away from formal education and learning systems to broader base that includes work-based learning and recognition of variety of management skills”.
