Education / Case studies

Why do management teams spend so much on leadership development instead of changing the culture?
There are fatal flaws in the leadership development industry.

London-born Gosling has been at AUT University since arriving in New Zealand in 2002. She heads a 90-member IT department, who serve 2500 staff and 25,000 students.
Gosling likes working for a large organisation with “lots of people, lots of challenges and lots of stuff going on”.

From the aspiring finance director to the would-be chief executive, professionals aiming for the upper ranks of a specific field of management are sometimes held back by a lack of a broad qualification beyond just technical skills.
A Master of Business Administration degree can bridge the gap between functional expertise and management skills, but finding the right program among the 40 Australian universities offering MBAs is not as straightforward as it appears.

The enemy of ongoing education for any executive is undoubtedly time, while New Zealand’s ICT executives say there’s also a dearth of useful educational opportunities to fit those limited time frames — particularly a lack of online learning opportunities and courses with practical, real world content.
Robin Johansen, chief information officer for Beca Corporate, says while he has embraced a number of learning styles, he is unlikely to attend courses or seminars that don’t have “immediate utility” and is more likely to pay for an online course that can be used to meet immediate needs.

When it comes to teaching students management skills, MBA programs deliver the bare minimum at best, according to a new American study.
Using survey data on more than 8600 managers, 373 business schools and 118 deans and program directors, the study finds MBA programs lack emphasis on human capital and decision-making management course requirements - part of the curriculum area known as "soft skills".