General Management Development
"In my experience one of the best things about Cranfield is that the course tutors don’t tell you how to run your business," says Richard Taylor, UK Managing Director of international insurance company HDI-Gerling Industrial Insurance Company. "I’ve attended several courses on different management topics at Cranfield and have found that the tutors bring all the issues to your attention, highlight what you should be thinking about, and then provide you with the tools and techniques to tackle your individual business or management issues. The teaching is not prescriptive and I’m sure if five people go on the same course all five will come away with five different strategies that they have tailored to their own particular business situation.
Everything about Cranfield is very professional and the teaching is to a very high standard. The three courses I’ve attended there have opened my eyes to key management and, in particular, leadership issues and highlighted the importance of thinking strategically rather than just operationally. Recently I took my new seven strong team on the two-day High Performance Business Teams programme. That course provides a rare opportunity to discuss how you are working together as a team looking, in particular, at the challenges of teamwork at a strategy-making level. Moreover, the course puts you in an environment with teams from other industries. We found it particularly useful to see how other teams work and contrast the different ways of operating.
My objective for that course was to ensure we all had a common understanding of the issues, particularly strategic leadership issues, that we face together as a team. What we gained was a shared, general understanding of these issues which we can now build upon.
What makes Cranfield particularly special I feel is the really good balance of course members that it attracts. This provides an excellent opportunity to discuss issues with people at a similar organisational level and drawn from a broad range of industry sectors."
Richard Taylor, UK Managing Director, HDI - Gerling Industrial Insurance Company