TITLE : MAKING EXPERIENCE PAY: MANAGEMENT SUCCESS THROUGH EFFECTIVE LEARNING.

It is also my experience that managers have been given too narrow a view of the kind of opportunities available to them, with a succession of teaching techniques-case studies, T-groups, action learning-pressed as uniquely appropriate. There is, in fact, a range yf situations from which managers may learn. Most opportunities occur on the job but few of them are used. I show how they can be used, while still giving priority to the results a manager is expected to achieve. I believe learning situations do not have to be manufactured; they already exist as part of the normal environment.

The thrust of the book is to give direct help to managers, and particularly to help them to manage their own learning. I have tried to do this not only by illustrating the opportunities available, but by helping the individual manager to understand his own learning style. Those of us in the business of helping managers to learn have given far too little attention to differences in the ways in which individuals respond to particular kinds of learning experience. I have tried to help managers relate their uniqueness as individuals to the diversity of learning opportunities and methods available to them.

I have given particular emphasis throughout to the ways in which a manager can identify and meet his own learning needs. I call the manager who is really capable of defining and working on his own learning needs a `self-directed learner'. I do not intend to decry the help he can receive from others when I say that there is a need to shift the balance of discussion from the provider of learning to the manager. This is not to say that the manager does not need help on learning, but that he needs a different kind from that provided by many advisers and bosses. He also needs to understand more about what being helped means; it is one of the unusual features of this book that instead of suggesting ways in which advisers can help managers by desigining learning experiences, I have described ways in which managers can better manage their own response to help.

The predominance of the masculine gender in the book might cause some people to assume that I am writing only for men, or do not recognize the existence of women managers. Neither is the case, but as it is probable that only between two per cent and five per cent of the managerial populations in the UK and USA are women, I have accepted that male descriptions will be most helpful to most of my readers.

This book would not have been written without the encouragement of my wife, the forbearance of my children and the help of Peter Honey.