To get their companies to rise to the current situation, company owners need to think of which capabilities represent critical gaps in their company’s leadership and management ability. The critical question is "where does management next need new skills?" Effectively identifying management's critical skill gaps, and starting development there, can save time, energy, and company resources.

Traditional Education Apporaches

To fill these capability gaps, company owners need to provide practical education programs that ensure that new skills are well learned and can be quickly and readily applied to the job. The two most traditional methods of developing management skills have been the "packaged" approach and the "custom" approach. In the packaged approach, managers are sent off-site to a single- or multi-day public training event; or an "off-the-shelf" program is purchased and delivered in-house by expert training staff. In the custom approach, an internal or outsourced trainer/consultant formally and rigorously assesses the company's management and then develops a specific education program focused on a set of particular needs.

Package training is inexpensive, fixed priced and you usually know what you are getting. However, its content may not exactly meet your company’s needs, and programs are usually one-shot with no follow-up, yielding lower learning retention and application to the job. Also, with this approach, participants are usually required to be in a class room for an extended period, which is not possible for many managers these days. Conversely, custom training may more relevant to company needs, can be ongoing with subsequent follow-up, and can be flexibly scheduled. However, it may be expensive to create, time-consuming and costly if necessary to rework or adjust to changing needs, and more risky to implement because of unproven course materials.

The many disadvantages of traditional training approaches can lead to wasted time and effort for participants, irrelevant skills for managing the business, and higher education costs to your organization.

New Education Approaches

Modular education provides a new approach to develop your management team. A "learning module" is a short (2- to 4-hour) intact skill development unit. It provides conceptual learning, motivation and practice with regard to a specific capability area (e.g., making sound decisions under stress, getting through too much to do with not enough time, getting more done with less resources, influencing without having formal authority, leveraging staff through people empowerment, coaching for improved leadership, etc.). A modular curriculum or program is a series of learning modules strung together and scheduled in regular intervals (usually once every 1to 4 weeks) over an extended period of time. Modules can be created by your own internal training staff, broken up from existing larger packaged or custom programs you already have, or purchased one-at-a-time or many together from outside vendors.

Because they are made up of short, easy to handle segments, modular education programs are more convenient to work with than either packaged or custom training programs. Modules can be more quickly created and delivered to specifically fill any critical management gap. Once created, separate modules can then be tailored, combined, and mixed and matched to best suit a company's particular need, even as those needs change. Also, like a quick injection of new knowledge or know-how, the modular approach leads to more immediate training application to the job, and provides an opportunity to solidify learning in follow-on sessions.

Modular education combines the best of both package and custom approaches, but by being short and convenient, they lack the downsides of either. Compared to traditional training, modular education offers: short segments of concentrated and focused learning with immediate application, continual learning reinforcement, cost-effectiveness, "just-in-time" delivery, greater organizational control over what’s being taught, and usually no group size constraints. Unlike most other instructional programs, modules can be quickly and conveniently cobbled together to fit your organization's array of management development needs. Thus, you avoid the heavy costs of either purchasing large training packages or customizing/redesigning large programs.

Modular education keeps costs down while allowing your managers to build practical and relevant skills continually. The result is continuous improvement of your organization's operations as new abilities get applied both to deal with your company's current problems and to face its new challenges.

In seeking management development vendors that offer modular education, look for vendors who will provide expedient management assessment, a broad curriculum selection, effective training implementation, competent classroom educators, and continual program feedback and adjustment as your company’s needs evolve or change. Also, note that well-designed management education offers not just applicable tools, but also personal motivation, proven methods and ongoing discipline to ensure that training gets applied to the participant’s job. Modular education can provide your organization with the management capabilities it requires without burdening your people’s time and your company's resources.


Harvy Simkovits, CMC, President of Business Wisdom, works with owner managed companies to help them grow, prosper and continue on by offering innovative approaches to business development, company management, organization leadership and learning, and management education. He can be reached at 781-862-3983 or .