Cranfield General Management Programme - Case Study
Sue Armstrong-Brown
Head of Countryside and Species Conservation
RSPB
“I was expecting Cranfield’s General Management Programme to be a high level, high quality course but I actually found it to be an exceptional programme that exceeded my expectations. What I was expecting was the emphasis on management knowledge and the depth of input in terms of the theory and practice of management – so that came as no surprise. But I wasn’t expecting the degree to which the programme was tailored to the individual and amount of focus on personal development. This spotlight on you as an individual is what makes this course unique. So while it’s possible to gather quite a lot of management knowledge from a book, what I couldn’t possibly have gained without this course is the understanding of how to apply this knowledge in my own work situation.
When I signed up for the course in March 2006 I was the RSPB’s Head of Agriculture Policy. At that point in my career I felt I needed to gain some more high level management skills in order to take on more responsibility in the organisation. The Cranfield programme has a modular format of an initial 12 days plus three and 12-month reviews. Over that year, the course really challenged me in terms of reflecting on my own management style and how to make best use of the knowledge that I was gaining. For myself, the most significant learning point from the programme was recognising that there’s an important difference between being liked and being respected at work. I think I probably started the course as too much of a ‘people pleaser’ without realising the impact of this on work. I had something of a ‘light bulb’ moment during one of the programme’s weekend projects and that has proved extremely helpful to me. I certainly feel better equipped to manage people now. In fact the programme really helped progress my career in a very positive way. I have been promoted twice since the course and have gone from heading a team of nine to running a department of 56 people.
This is a very intensive course and the teaching staff certainly pushed us. The course leaders have a massive amount of specialist knowledge and I always found the material challenging and interesting – even when the topic was one that I wouldn’t necessarily use immediately. I also found the teaching staff to be very much in tune with the ethos of the course – that we were all there on a personal journey and not just to take in information. That’s the magic ingredient about this course: the programme provides a filter that enables you personally to make best use of the knowledge you gain.”