Prepare for a place on the board

A group of senior executives are exploring Wordsworth's historic home, Dove Cottage, at Grasmere in the heart of the Lake District. They're being introduced to the unusual art of reflective management and part of the International Masters in Practicing Management (IMPM), a qualification more advanced than the MBA.

The course was launched 17 years ago and is run jointly by Lancaster University Management School and McGill University in Montreal, Canada. It seeks to address the challenges and cultural imperatives for modern businesses, as well as to prepare people for board-level positions. The IMPM has benefited from the renewed interest in board-level education and a rebranding that challenges MBA orthodoxy. "There is a general agreement that organisations have to manage themselves, not in terms of profit, but more broadly in terms of their impact on the environment and society. In the long term, this is the only way the capitalist system can survive," says Lucas Introna, the academic director of the IMPM.

The IMPM's philosophy, framed by its co-founder Henry Mintzberg, is that management is a continuously evolving practice that is a blend of science, craft and insight. As the author of Managers Not MBAs, asserts, the art of management is not something that can be taught by an MBA. "The IMPM is about doing a better job, not just getting a better job," says Mintzberg, Cleghorn professor of management studies at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.

Read full article: The Independent, April 12, 2012