Paul Kearns, as controversial as ever, asks whether the National School of Government's new management development programmes are placebos or the real McCoy?

As someone who regularly brings upon himself scorn, abuse and ridicule in equal measures, simply because I insist that anyone wanting to call themselves a learning professional should provide some evidence that their methods work, it was reassuring to see that even the pharmaceutical profession faces the same challenge. Yes, I am referring to the recent story www.news.bbc.co.uk that anti-depressants sometimes have no greater efficacy than a placebo.

Let us be clear though what this research seems to be implying, that taking a placebo actually makes the patient feel better because they expect it to. This immediately struck me as a perfect parallel for the world of management development. It often makes managers feel better but the question we have to ask is does it really make them any better? So, are your management development courses the real McCoy or placebos: more importantly what difference, if any, do they make and how would you know?

Let us take a look at some of the courses currently being offered by the National School of Government from their latest designer range, Style and Influence (see www.nationalschool.gov.uk although such programmes are probably not too dissimilar to what many other companies are offering their managers today:

Who wouldn't want one of these? They sound so life enhancing that just attending is likely to make you feel better. Plus, no doubt the feedback from many of the delegates will be as glowing as anyone who has just come out of a depression after taking the tablets.

But this is where the anti-depressant analogy has to end. How managers 'feel', is not the objective of management development. The objective of management development is enhanced management performance. Yet one could ask what the real objectives behind such courses are and who is offering placebos to whom?

Well perhaps the most obvious answer is that, as with most training and development, organisations want at least to make it look as though they are taking development seriously. As far as the government is concerned it needs to show it is fully supporting its national training strategy and so making sure it is giving lots of courses to its civil servants certainly makes it look like that. But why then are these courses so concerned with image and style and not with the serious problems that this country faces? Perhaps this is all just meant to be a placebo for the taxpayer to swallow? It looks like development but no ministers or senior civil servants are actually going to have to change their ways, their behaviour or their management methods.

If we want to move away from placebo development though, I can think of a huge list of really important issues that should be included on the menu such as 'how to admit your mistakes and learn from them', 'how to allow your staff to give you painfully honest feedback' and 'project management for managers in an environment where funding changes every year for political reasons'. That would be really serious management development but I can almost hear the Mandarins rushing to pop a few pills at just the thought of it.

Paul Kearns specialises in measuring the value of the human contribution to organisational success and teaches real evaluation around the world. He is the author of the CIPD’s best selling 'Evaluating the ROI from Learning'. Visit www.paulkearns.co.uk

The views expressed in the Opinion column are those of the author and not of TrainingZone.co.uk