@book{McCall,1988Morgan,
abstract = {Morgan McCall, Michael Lombardo and Ann Morrison are from the Centre for Creative Leadership based in North Carolina. The book presents the centre’s research on executive development (originally published as 'Key Events in Executives’ Lives', published by the centre in 1987) to a non-specialist audience. The Lessons of Experience codifies five years of qualitative data in order to produce an accessible 200-page book suitable for the mainstream business market. Starting with the assumption that managers only spend a tiny percentage of their time in a classroom, the authors suggest that it must be in the other 99 per cent of the time that development takes place; in other words, people learn and develop on the job. The expense associated with having managers who are learning-by-doing is therefore seen as part of an organisation’s investment in development. Challenge is important to development, but what matters, and why, and what people get out of it, is the mystery this book tries to tackle.  Firing people, working with managers, knowing how the business works, handling problems, dealing with office politics: these and others are the lessons of experience, and must be learned for executive development to take place. The authors are quick to point out that learning is a “murky business” that occurs fitfully; managers, therefore, have to dig learning out of complex and ambiguous situations. The authors claim that “not all experiences are created equal – some pack more developmental wallop than others”. They list 616 ‘events’ their research uncovered, and 1,547 lessons that can be drawn from these events. The events are covered in three overlapping categories in the remainder of the book: assignments, bosses and hardships.   Assignments  In a book concerned with the relationship between challenge and learning, tough work assignments are viewed as the best teacher for up-and-coming executives; stable and predictable jobs do not involve learning. The authors state that diversity and adversity offer more learning opportunities than repetitive work ever can.  Interviewees mentioned in the book recalled many assignments: early work experience, their first supervisory job, project and task forces, leading elders, line-to-staff switches, or learning a new technical area. Some received a shot of adrenalin by starting ventures from scratch while others were sent to improve failing businesses. A scary leap in scope was a frequent experience. The novice managers learned that business school had not taught them everything, and that decisions would never keep everyone happy in a political workplace; the authors see this as a perspective transformation. Many assignments could have been labelled as ‘tests’ in that they asked managers to learn new skills on the run and to manage something before they had mastered it.  Later in their careers the leaders spoke of being given senior positions that were conceptual rather than tangible; this taught them to think strategically rather than tactically. Learning to think like an executive in this way often meant clearing the way for others and managing by remote control rather than by mucking in.  Listing the learning points from assignments, the authors are careful to stress that careers should not be planned to cover all of the experiences that provided these learning points. A year on a task force, some experience of a start-up, a year at corporate HQ, then a big-scope line job, then a fix-it job, runs counter to what the book says about how executives learn. Experiences within jobs, not jobs per se, offer learning opportunities.   },
author = {McCall, M. and Lombardo, M. and Morrison, A.},
title = {The lessons of experience: How successful executives develop on the job},
year = {1988},
publisher = {Lexington Books},
language = {English},
url = {books.google.com/books?id=VW4IpDx_oFAC&lpg=PR9&ots=2gNrY70OD6&dq=mccall%20%22The%20lessons%20of%20experience%22&lr&pg=PR2#v=onepage&q=mccall%20%22The%20lessons%20of%20experience%22&f=false}
}