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Teams are vital for business survival. When top teams ask for team‐building what do they really mean? More importantly, what should they get? Explores the many possible objectives of team development and suggests a diagnostic framework for identifying the priority areas. Identifies the key elements of team performance as goals, roles, interpersonal relationships and processes (GRIP) as a basis to serve for diagnosis of priority issues to be addressed in a team development event. Discusses options for design and style of event or approach. Provides a checklist of key questions for identifying which of the GRIP elements needs to be addressed as a matter of priority.

Three central questions come to mind when considering change: Why does it happen? How does it happen? How can it be better managed? The changes we are exploring are not smooth, natural transitions, but periods of considerable turbulence and unnatural activity which require careful and skilful management. The stages in change are described and a helpful action checklist is suggested.

Suggests that increasing competitiveness in the corporate environment demands new managerial skills which reflect the key values of 1990s employee behaviour – i.e. quality performance in line with the constantly changing requirements of clients and colleagues. Points to the dramatic increase in management training as one way of enhancing managerial creativity and skill, and asks if such training programmes actually work, and if they can help managers to overcome their often unproductive work habits. Describes a successful management development programme aimed primarily at directors within a large, multinational insurance broking firm. Concludes that it is crucial that such training helps managers to adjust to, and deal with, their environment by encouraging them to learn how to learn and to use this capacity to confront performance problems and to work with others to overcome them.

At a time when industrial expense is under great pressure, particularly training budgets, it is of great importance that training is carefully focused, to ensure that organizations obtain the maximum benefit. The widely accepted procedures for evaluation described by Donald Kirkpatrick almost without exception have been applied only at level 1 (Student Reaction forms). Many researchers have questioned the value of this part‐application of an evaluation strategy. This new system of training effectiveness evaluation not only forms the basis of individual analysis, but also allows group deficiencies to be explored over time. The method based on self‐perceived skill gap measurement allows the monitoring of skills management at individual departmental and organizational levels and gives management, for the first time, a control measure to which skill management budgets (of which training is a part) can be compared.

Training and development at a company that supplies components to the automotive industry could provide a template for business growth and development in an increasingly complex business world. INA Llanelli is the production facility for INA Bearing Company Ltd., a UK subsidiary of the German‐owned international group, INA Schaeffler KG. The Llanelli plant – which specializes in making bearings, precision components, mechanical tappets and tension pulleys, most of which are supplied to the automotive industry – recently won the people‐development company prize at the 2003 Welsh Business Awards.

At each New Year we stand at the threshold of fresh scenes and hopes, of opportunities and pastures new. It is the time for casting off shackles and burdens that have weighed us down in the old year; almost a new chapter of life. We scan the prevailing scene for signs that will chart the year's unrolling and beyond, and hope profoundly for a smooth passage. The present is largely the product of the past, but of the future, who knows? Man therefore forever seems to be entering upon something new—a change, a challenge, events of great portent. This, of course, is what life is all about. Trends usually precede events, often by a decade or more, yet it is a paradox that so many are taken by surprise when they occur. Trends there have been and well marked; signs, too, for the discerning. In fields particular, they portend overall progress; in general, not a few bode ill.

The need for strong leadership is at the top of the agenda for many companies, but understanding what constitutes good and effective leadership that will help companies overcome transitionary periods such as economic downturns or increased competition is not as simple as it might seem. Many companies are spending a lot of time and money to train their top management, but these training methods often do not fulfil the business and individual needs critical for long‐term survival. Examines one company where the provision of focussed, business enhancing management and leadership has helped to fuel the next stage of its development.

The purpose of this paper is to review apprenticeship policy in the UK and to present examples of good practice.

The approach takes the form of a review of three cases.

Apprenticeships are not an easy option. An apprenticeship scheme, and indeed any training initiative, will not command support within an organisation unless it can be seen to assist the business in economic terms. Context is critical.

The paper argues for a more realistic assessment of the role of apprenticeship at the level of government policy and in the organisation.

The paper offers a different and more measured perspective on apprenticeships, which contrast with current uncritical hype and over-selling.

NEXT TO banking, we are informed, Business Consultancy is the most favoured profession for graduates in the United States and it is likely, as in so much else, that here in Britain the same trend will be followed. It follows, as the famous query in a one‐time quiz member put it, that ‘it all depends on what you mean by Business Consultancy’.

A temperature probe for use in an air stream for measuring the air temperature plus the adiabatic temperature rise thereof, the probe comprising a body having a chamber provided with an air receiving inlet facing forwardly in said stream, there being spaced ports in the periphery of the body communicating with the chamber allowing a limited escape of air from the rear portion of the chamber, said inlet and port means being related in capacity so that the entering air is brought substantially to rest in the chamber, the body having an insulating chamber in surrounding relation to the first chamber and ports communicating with the insulating chamber to allow a limited air flow therethrough, means on at least one wall of the insulating chamber for preventing heat conduction there‐through, and a temperature sensitive device in said chamber.