New Emphasis on Management Training Hardly a week passes in which an invitation does not come from some university or management consultant firm to send some of our prospective management personnel for exposure to the newest concepts in the arts of administration. Seldom do we pick up a periodical, even of the popular variety, that does not contain an article about some company's program for management development. Your bookcases, like mine, surely have received more than their share of books on how to become a more effective administrator, a better manager, or an executive that gets the job done. This unprecedented emphasis on managerial development has been prevalent since the close of World War II, and has long since passed the fad stage. Why is this? American industry has always managed to develop its leaders in the past; what is it that's different today? Probably it stems from the increasing size and complexity of industry. Great technological developments, for which the engineers are partly responsible, have contributed to this complexity and growth. We have also inherited some factors from the past, the depression of the 30's and war in the 40's with their respective unemployment and shortage of workers played their part in disrupting the transition of American industry to its present status. The fact that in the past 25 years government has come to play an ever increasing role in American industry, exercising much greater regulation and control, has also had its effect. Now with the return to a highly competitive era, we are all concerned with the problem of getting more people to manage capably and to perpetuate our enterprises. No Stereotype for Successful Managers In all the discussion that bas developed over the past few years, it is obvious that many people think a manager or an executive has certain specific traits easily recognized which can be developed by education, training, and experience. This is not true, for there is no stereotype of successful managers. Managers vary just like other people do. Certainly there is no reason why all the characteristics of managers at different levels should be similar, and why shouldn't they vary from company to company and industry to industry and from time to time? American industry, and the oil industry in particular, must depend on all its professional and highly skilled employees as a reservoir of managers today and increasingly so in the future. On this basis, undoubtedly the engineering profession will provide its share of these managers. In searching for managers, our criterion should not be any arbitrary traits or qualifications, but rather "what can a man accomplish."