Our Approach Our Values. We believe that effective management development lies at the heart of organisational effectiveness. Everyone has had the experience of being lectured at; and everyone knows that lecturing is not the most effective way to help anyone develop new insights and skills. We have developed an approach to learning based on some simple truths. People get higher value from their own experiences than from the tutor's. People learn more by working in small groups discussing real issues than by sitting listening to an "expert". People learn more if they know they can use what they are learning in their daily work. People get high value if they are given permission and time to say the unsayable and think the unthinkable in a risk-free environment. People thrive on effective feedback. Self-awareness is the first step in effective personal development. The Learning Event. We will typically treat a topic in the following way: We ask a question ("What is good management ?" : "How do you handle exceptional performance ?" : "Why do projects fail ?" ), which is immediately and obviously relevant to the participants. We initiate a discussion to warm the idea up. We present current best practice and the latest thinking and research on the issue, supported by examples and case studies. Participants work in teams on an exercise which requires them to put all their own experiences and our formal input together, to develop their answers to the original question. Participants record their team's conclusions. Each team then presents its findings in plenary session. The whole group discusses the similarities and the differences between the teams' outputs, and reaches consensus. We give handouts which summarise the topic, and give the participants time to read and question them. The formal input may be supported by videos, process models, strategic or management toolkits etc. Where the topic is personal and interpersonal behaviour, we often video the team to help participants develop their insights and skills. The whole learning process is supported by regular Learning Diaries, where participants reflect on what they have found particularly useful, share this with their colleagues, and write a personal log of their experiences and action plans. Taking the Learning Back to the Workplace. Training often has to take place off-site to a fixed schedule, and this makes it a special event. Unfortunately, this also tends to disconnect it from the real world: "I've been on my course - now I've got to get back to work". This presents perhaps the biggest challenge to training designers and tutors. At Thornbury, we address this issue in several ways. The whole workshop is focused on your organisation. For example, topics and team exercises address the issues you have told us are critical to meeting your needs, and therefore the participants' needs. The Learning Diary sessions create a detailed record of what each participant found particularly useful or helpful, and of any personal actions he or she has decided to take as a result. The final session of each event is dedicated to action planning. This is taken seriously: it is each participant's commitment to transfer skills and insights back to the workplace. We have developed a process which leads each participant through the sequence of decisions needed to create an Action Plan which survives the onslaught of the in-tray, e-mail, and the telephone. Thornbury handout manuals are designed not to cart yards of magazine article reprints around, but to form a permanent and personal record of the topics, the team discussions, the Learning Diaries, and the participants' personal and team Action Plans. We are committed to Action Learning as the basis for transforming insights into behaviour. On most events, we introduce participants to Action Learning, form Action Learning Sets, and get these sets to work on the syndicate exercises. In this way, they are already well acquainted with each other, and with the style of Action Learning, as they design their action plans and embark on their action learning process. Each Action Learning Set has a tutor facilitator, and - if there is an experienced facilitator on site - local support as well. Half-day review meetings are held every 2-3 weeks until everyone is agreed that the Set is both competent and confident in its ability to manage its own learning. In this way, Thornbury meets the two great challenges of training: How to help participants get the best out of their learning experience: How to transform that learning into more effective personal behaviour and better organisational performance. “When I asked Thornbury to deliver a Finance for Non-Financial Managers course, they didn’t just deliver, they excelled. By spending time with our FD to really understand the nuances of our business, they ensured that they focused on the issues that were pertinent to us.” Cheryl Henry, T&D Mgr, Contact 24

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