The future face of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) - by Phillip Charlton

Are current CPD programs for executives meeting the needs of the managers of today?

Today we find ourselves living in an environment where the balance between work and life are becoming increasingly difficult to juggle. On top of this is the inherent demand to continually update and refresh our management ideas and techniques to remain competitive in business. So how does one distinguish between sound management education principles and business practices?

There are a number of reasons that may motivate us to undergo further training and education. It may be to satisfy self-esteem and quest for career advancement, increased remuneration, peer respect or promotion. Ultimately, in this day and age, time is the enemy. We no longer have the luxury of spending weeks away from work undertaking a sabbatical or secondment to further enhance our skills. Such a long period of time away from the workforce could lead to "extinction" from the workplace as we lose touch with reality while the position we held is redeployed or harvested. So what is the solution to educating managers in the twenty-first century?

The answer lies in the educators. Educators - universities, businesses and private providers - need to be attuned to the needs of the individual. The demand for the future will be for cost effective, time efficient education programs that meet the specific needs of each individual, minimising the time away for the workplace. The key lies in providing continuing professional development that is: academically recognised, industry supported, transportable from workplace to workplace, recognised by one university to another and globally relevant. This is the future face of continuing professional development (CPD) for executives.

For such a program to succeed it needs to be linked to a global perspective, drawing on the experience of academic experts from around the world. There is a chasm between university academic and industry experts. Therefore a link between academic models and theories and industry realities needs to be identified to allow participants to unpack the concepts and have a solution to take away which is readily applicable to their workplaces. All too often continuing professional development for executives fails in this area. The executive of today has responsibility placed on him or her to produce results and be accountable for their actions, and for those who work around them. It is important that executives are able to apply what they have learnt in their workplace, otherwise the program may be deemed to be a failure.

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