Management Skill Development

The Basic Idea

When I first returned to University to get Business Administration training, I found Brandon University had been taking the "management development " approach to community development in its course structure. At that time there was only a minor offered in business, and that was handled under the Economics department. The rationale at the time was that people going into any number of non-business occupations could use some development of management skills. Thus a Major in social work with a target occupation of Social work would be enhanced by some basic concepts of management for work in that field.

Management within organizations itself covers the rough areas of :

• Planning
• organizing
• staffing
• leading / directing
• controlling (costs etc)
• evaluating

The many management handbooks on the bookshelves, and the vast amounts spent in government and business for workshops to upgrade staff, attest to both the need and the popularity of this approach to community development. Skills learned in one sector of life can easily be transferred to other sectors, so it really doesn't matter where the upgrading takes place. This factor alone, makes for easy entry into this field of community development either as an individual doing self-upgrading or as a small group trying to bring about greater understanding of these life dynamics.

Off-Line Resources

• (no author). "Introduction to Results Based Management (training Workshop)"Results Based Management.Montreal: CAC International, 1999. Reprinted in Ferrazzi, Gabe. Course Reader, Rural Community Development, Brandon University, 2001.
  This is the outline of a tool for use in a program or project planning process. It focuses on a results chain. It makes the interesting distinction between:
  • outputs (for short-term goals)
  • outcomes (for medium term goals)
  • Impacts (for long term goals)

  The booklet is a very basic introduction to the core concepts of results based evaluation, in both formative and summative uses. It is simple and practical.

On-line Resources