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In spite of the trend to delegate the training and development of new managers to line managers, new managers often arrive on short management programmes without clearly formulated learning needs. If business schools are to deliver significant learning experiences, they must find ways to help course members identify these needs, and they must design programmes with the flexibility to address them. Uses the Developing Managerial Skills Programme developed at Ashridge, with its learning needs audit, live management exercise and self‐development plan to illustrate a successful design. Explains the design rationale and describes the programme, using a model of learning with seven stages: equilibrium/diagnosis/awareness/resolving/reshaping/experimentation/feedback/integration. The programme is evaluated by a survey of past participants.

Line managers are very important cogs in the managerial wheel. Discusses the Ashridge Developing Managerial Skills programme and examines line managers′ attitudes to themselves and their work objectives plus their needs and objectives. Shows the value of a learning needs audit in aiding line managers to prioritize their competences using how, what and why, as guides. Concludes that, though a young programme, the design is a proven success and can only develop into a stronger, better adolescent. Business schools can be a major help in this by building links between educational experience and life in the workplace.

Suggests that often untapped human strengths have major importance in the search for exceptional performance. Argues that information technology has not and will not replace such qualities, as had been thought in the 1980s. Looks at ways to maximize human resources in a world of organizational change, suggesting that there is need for a shaping of a dynamic set of relationships at all organization levels, and that the needs, aspirations and potential of people hold the key.