How to select external courses

Abstract

Like any other form of business investment, the selection of external management training courses requires a skilful blend of patient research, careful planning and mature judgment. Never before have managers been faced with such an abundance of courses and institutions: in a field once dominated by Henley and Ashridge, there are now hundreds of courses, workshops and seminars run by a variety of organisations, ranging from universities and technical colleges to consultants and professional bodies. Daily, the problem of selecting the right course becomes ever more confusing and, inevitably, the risk of making a poor selection has correspondingly increased. Confronted by such diversity, the individual manager all too often becomes the victim of a kind of executive course roulette in which both time and money are recklessly gambled on courses which bear little relation to his training needs. In any sector of business activity, amateurishness and waste are inseparable companions: management training is no exception to this rule. Indeed, the well‐known difficulties of measuring the benefits of such training make it all the more imperative that decisions are made rationally and objectively. Any organisation contemplating the use of external courses requires a systematic course selection policy. This in turn, involves four major steps: defining objectives, initiating research, making the choice and evaluating results.