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Training today's men for tomorrow's work

21th January 1977
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Page 25, 21th January 1977 — Training today's men for tomorrow's work
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Making certain of a competent and reliable road transport system for the future means the responsible training of young transport managers today. John Darker interviewed one such successful young man, John Huggon, corporate plannning manager of Roadline UK Ltd, to find out what kind of training he had acquired

TRANSPORT management of both medium and large-sized companies increasingly demands a wide knowledge of all aspects of general management.

The enormous complexity of current legislation in fields far removed from the actual operation of lorries now demands insight, preferably founded on much practical experience, of such disciplines as accounting, marketing, personnel relations, organisation and planning.

The National Freight Corporation has a particular responsibility, as the nation's largest road transport business, to train tomorrow's managers.

Many of the top men in the NFC were brought in from outside precisely because of the failure of the State-owned Corporation's undertakings to generate top management "timberof the right calibre.

In the nineteen-eighties and nineties, provision made for management development today will, hopefully, prove to be equal to the challenge.

John Huggon, aged 28, is corporate planning manager of Roadline UK Ltd, an NFC subsidiary, formerly known as BRS Parcels Ltd_ John has recently successfully completed a special type of sandwich course leading to the new Masters Degree in Management Studies at Brunel University.

The NEC awarded two scholarships for the unique post-graduate course, established in 1974 by the Administrative Staff College. Henley, in association with Brunel University. (Bob Markham, the other successful candidate, is now Roadline UK's manager at the new Northampton depot.) John Huggon joined the Corporation as a management trainee in 1969, after graduating in Economics at Sheffield University. Training, cadet-style, allowed spells at each of the main subsidiary companies of the NEC. Generally, with larger companies, the training period lasted eight weeks, with four-week periods at smaller companies.

Use made of trainees varies a lot, as others with knowledge of the routine would confirm. General oversight by the training manager is a major factor in making sensible use of the management trainee's time, and the time of those with whom he is working.

John, in one assignment, was asked to help out in a parcels traffic office when the department was short staffed through "flu". On other training spells he would be given a specific task by a local manager, and would not be in the operational front line.

A typical assignment was to study the incidence of trailer damage at an NCL depot and to make proposals for overcoming it.

Such a task is typical in road haulage and defies any easy, or permanent solution, but there are good reasons why a trainee should learn, first hand, of the human and operational difficulties.

With an Economics degree under his belt and the benefit of practical training in road transport management, John decided that still more study would help him to progress. He qualified as an Associate Certified Accountant.

This led to his appointment in 1972 as financial analyst, and the scope of his work was enlarged in 1974 with his appointment as financial and economic analyst.

This solid background of study combined with cadet-type training led to John's present appointment as Roadline UK's corporate planning manager at company headquarters. It must also have influenced the NFC's scholarship award.

The Henley /Brunel Masters programme provides an attractive blend of post graduate and post experience education. There are four college-based modules, each of seven weeks' duration, linked by in-service periods, each one of approximately 14 weeks. This part of the programme covers a period of 18 months.

The four modules provide for intensive study within the College and University. During the in-service periods, members of the Masters programme undertake assignments 'either within their own or other organisations. The period after the fourth module is spent preparing the final dissertation.

An attraction to the NFC of the Brunel/Henley Masters programme is that general management subjects are covered. John found the sustained inter-disciplinary approach valuable in relating all the course's teaching to management.

Life is too short for the general manager of a large road transport business to be fully professional at all the diverse functions, but it is hugely beneficial for a young manager to mix with his peers in other organisations and learn from them of typical workaday problems. That is how insight is learned.

John noted that there was a higher than normal university proportion of industry tutors, though all were full-time educationists, and much of the teaching was based on experience — an invaluable back-cloth to arid text-books.

He found, too, that having been in industry himself for some six years, he could cope effectively with the Masters course and derive the maximum profit from it. The rub-off in sharing the wide range of management experience with other people on the course will be of lasting benefit.

All but one of the 15 post graduate students had already worked in full-time jobs. Most were from large organisations and most had been nominated by their companies.

John makes the point that the sandwich-type course makes better sense than a full-time course lasting a year or more. With the lengthy absence from work on a full-time course the student wonders whether he will be able easily to pick up the threads of his previous responsibilities — even that the job he was doing may have disappeared.

Returning periodically to his desk John was able to use some of his newly acquired knowledge on the actual job.

The corporate planning function is particularly important within the parcels and smalls sector of NFC companies. In the marketing area, policy emanates mostly from the Corporation, which must make commercial sense in relation to other companies within the State transport sector.

Within individual companies such as Roadline UK Ltd there is scope for forward planning, and for what John Huggon terms "risk analysis''. Mathematical concepts have their place in predicting future business growth, or contraction, and corporate planners must have regard to new philosophies of accountancy. Book figures related to historical costs of acquiring assets need to be replaced rapidly by replacement costs related to inflationary increases.

John could well be involved in evaluating the pros and cons of major company investment decisions, such as the case for a new depot or improvements to an existing depot.

Large companies with a spread of properties, some of which may be leased, have to decide before the last minute whether to re-negotiate a lease or to re-organise the business activities concerned. Land costs are important if there is any question of building new premises.

John's general management training stands him in good stead with the type of decision-making that affects several elements, ie finance, organisation, staffing levels, labour relations, etc.

Managers today may be exercised as to how far down the line information and consultation should go. -The Henley approach would be to explain to staff what is planned in as much detail as possible-, said John. "Today, there is no way you can avoid telling staff."

As part of the Henley/ Brunel course the Masters degree students visited Holland. They heard there about a Co-operative business which had been closed down with the full backing of the works council, on which all unions were represented.

Despite a decision made in good faith in the interests of the business, the decision was not acceptable to the staff.

Those who advocate worker directors, or even 50-50 sharing of all major decisions by managers and trade unions, may come to realise that workers' representatives making unpopular decisions will run the risk of forfeiting the support of employees whose interests are, or appear to be, adversely affected.

Many managerial decisions tend to be routine matters. I asked John, who is well versed in the scope of computers, how soon it would be possible to hand over many business chores to a computer.

He agreed that computers could be set to take routine decisions according to well defined rules, and in such matters as cashflow, computer print-outs were useful to people taking the actual decisions.

But any decision requiring novel thinking is not suitable for a computer which can only behave as it has been programmed to behave.

To build in human imagination to a computer is, perhaps fortunately, impossible. Human decision-making is a very complex matter; no one really knows how decisions are made and, indeed, why inconsistency should be a feature of some decision makers.

One surprising thing arising from my talk with John Huggon was to learn that few companies bother to check on the accuracy of forecasts made by corporate planners in previous years, despite the major decisions, often involving heavy investment, based upon the forecasts.

Interestingly. John believes that accountancy is not a good training for general management. Many accountants, he says, get "number-blind," unable to relate accounting figures to flesh and blood situations. Many of the most dynamic American companies are run by entrepreneurs, not by accountants, who rank in status lower than their British counterparts.

Corporate planning is an increasingly important function of management; a function that must be carried out as part of general management, if the size of company does not merit a special department.

John has had to create his own small department in Roadline UK Ltd. His work brings him into contact with other aspects of management at head office, and down the line at areas and branches. The submission of investment projects to the NFC represents one end product, though in the process of analysis and evaluation, considerable tact must be exercised. Many projects deserving of backing in an era of expanded trade may have to await happier times.

One thought John derived from his Masters Course is that transport managers, despite a profound conviction are not a "special case". Their difficulties in many areas of management are equalled, if not exceeded, by other industries.

Corporate planning involves much more than crystal ball gazing, which we can all do, if only because price tabs have to be placed on aspects of prediction.

John Huggon, Master of Arts in Management Studies, will justify his role in Roadline UK Ltd if he channels new investment into fertile areas. It is the nature of corporate planning that a single inspired guess could lead to the same result as a mass of figurework based on irrefutable logic.

Maybe that gives hope for the small companies in road transport who may back winners in the next decade; and grow rich enough to sponsor promising young managers on Henley/Brunel courses!


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