Overview

The Chartered Management Institute Flexible Learning Programme is a series of workbooks prepared by the Chartered Management Institute and Elsevier for managers seeking to develop themselves.

Comprising ten open learning workbooks, the programme covers the best of modern management theory and practice. Each workbook provides a range of frameworks and techniques to improve your effectiveness as a manager, thus helping you acquire the knowledge and skill to make you fully competent in your role.

Each workbook is written by an experienced management writer and covers an important management topic or theme. The activities both reinforce learning and help to relate the generic ideas to your individual work context. While coverage of each topic is fully comprehensive, additional reading suggestions and reference sources are given for those who wish to study to a greater depth.

Designed to be practical, stimulating and challenging, the aim of the workbooks is to improve performance at work by benefiting you and your organization. This practical focus is at the heart of the competence based-approach that has been adopted by the programme.

Introduction

A project usually starts with an idea. Somebody, somewhere in the organization, gets an idea about something which is not happening at the moment, but looks as though it might be worth doing. It could be a small idea:

'Perhaps we could set up some kind of car-share scheme and get more people into work when there's a tube strike'.

or it could be a very big idea indeed:

'If we invest...