The key aspects of individual management development, such as recruitment, training, career development, job rotation, special assignments, meaningful work, relevant reward systems, need to be embedded in organizational systems, structures, values and policies and consistently applied in practice. In a learning organization, management development is not an on again, off again activity.

An organization full of change effective managers only, or of operational managers only, is likely to be headed towards bankruptcy. A balance is needed between operational and reshaping competencies. Part of that balance needs to be found within individuals, part of it in the respective strengths of individuals, and parts within the embedded processes and resources of the organization. This has important implications for the placing of managers in jobs and also for moving them when their key skills are no longer so relevant and the managerial needs of their positions change. It also has implications for the composition of top teams. Unless the top team includes some powerful members who are committed to 10ng-term performance, the organization is unlikely in the longer term to build those reshaping competencies that will ensure its own renewal that is, to become a learning organization.

Forward-looking organizations are increasingly identifying potential change leaders early in their careers, giving them responsibilities for smaller change projects and the opportunity to work closely with effective change practitioners so that they can develop the range of reshaping competencies that the firms increasingly need. Some firms are also taking some of their most effective managers off-line and giving them project responsibilities that encourage them to augment their existing high levels of operational competencies with reshaping competencies. Ensuring that many managers at critical stages of their careers have the experience of managing transitions is vital to developing a managerial mindset that balances the relative importance of maintaining effective ongoing operations with transforming them. It is this mindset that supports the need for current performance with the openness to change that underlies a learning organization.

In some cases, reshaping competencies may detract from immediate business results. Reshaping competencies requires considerable investment of resources, effort and time sometimes for little or no immediate benefit. Their expected benefits are often difficult to quantify or measure and the results only show up over time. Furthermore, continual investment is needed to maintain them. The benefits of creating learning organizations do not come free. They also do not come unmanaged. To be effective in meeting the organization's purposes, organizational learning needs to be a managed process and organizational learning a key responsibility of top management. The creation and use of reshaping competencies, both personal and corporate, is the key characteristic of the learning organization. The development of individual managers must itself become a corporate competen