In the words of Chris Williams, the ministry's head of defence management training, the initiative "represents a significant investment by the MoD in the training of rising managers at key stages in their careers".Ashridge, which has great international renown and is especially proud of its interactive learning facilities, was chosen because of the combination of resources and understanding of the issues faced by the department. And it appears that the staff are more than a little mindful of the traditions behind what Mr Osbaldeston calls a "historic change" in the ministry's approach to training and development.Pointing out that the armed forces have got such a track record in training that "when there's not a war they are training", Mr Pegg says he is a little surprised that they have not gone down this route before. The ministry wanted to learn from "best in the class" management practice in the private sector, Mr Williams says.The three-year contract, which can be extended for two years, will involve one-week residential programmes combined with practical projects and long- term personal development plans, and is clearly a feather in the cap of Ashridge.Chief executive Michael Osbaldeston admits that it is one of the largest contracts the organisation has undertaken. Mr Pegg envisages that the 200 who will attend each year will be of much the same status as those usually attending the centre's courses - heads of units and departments aged from their mid-thirties upwards.

Most will be civil servants, but there will be "a sprinkling" of uniformed officers from the Royal Navy, Army and the Royal Air Force because many of them have civilians working for them. The friction between "the army way of doing things" and the civilian approach is one of the issues at which the programme is aimed.The main emphasis, however, will be on helping "MoD managers" to achieve their personal development goals and enabling the ministry to bring about the significant changes it is seeking in culture and performance. In particular, there have been moves to break down the boundaries between the public and private sectors as well as to run the organisation more efficiently. And staff have perhaps had greater contacts with the business world than colleagues elsewhere in the Civil Service because of the organisation's extensive procurement activities.But whatever the background, the upshot is that the ministry's future high-flyers - civilians and uniformed personnel - will have a greater exposure to current business thinking than their predecessors would have dreamt of. However, he says the ministry people with whom he has dealt in putting the scheme together "came with quite an open mind". Like other government departments, the MoD has seen great changes in recent years, he says. After years of talk of takeover "battles", "captains" of industry, "leadership" and the like, it comes as something of a surprise to see the armed forces going to management school for inspiration. Nevertheless, that is what is happening, thanks to a three-year deal just agreed between the Ministry of Defence and Ashridge Management College.

But Mr Finney also sees it as a sort of sponsored research programme that will be monitored by Dr Booth, director of management studies at the university's economics department, and Dr Ogden, a teacher specialising in databases and systems analysis."It will provide an excellent platform for a masters degree," he says, adding that the marketable skills they will emerge with could take them into consultancy "or we may end up employing them".. At the very least, it stands to give them valuable work experience that they can take into a future permanent job. The operation based in the university's cybernetics department draws on the skills of a range of university departments to service a variety of businesses in the Thames Valley region and farther afield, including SmithKline Beecham, John Laing Construction and Sun Microsystems.But it could also give a real boost to the careers of the two recent graduates who emerge from the pack ready to begin work in April. The project could prove to be a ground-breaking programme for the Teaching Company Scheme and further consolidate Reading University's reputation in this area. "We hope they'll stimulate our people to come up with the answers."Not that Mr Finney sees himself and his company as the sole beneficiaries.

But Mr Finney believes he will benefit from the freshness of thinking they will bring. Accepting that the two people he will select from more than 50 "highly qualified" applicants are unlikely to have established consultancy skills, he says they are "designed to be a little bit of grit in the oyster".Rather than a weakness, it will be a strength that they will not have preconceived ideas of how a company should operate and will not be influenced by the systems and structures of other business operations."They will say, `Why are you doing it this way?' and they will challenge people to justify the way they are doing things," he adds. They would be supervised by Simon Booth and John Ogden, two of the university's faculty members with extensive consultancy experience. One would look at general management and the other would concentrate on information technology. It hops around in time from Watergate to the Chequers incident to Dickie's strict Quaker childhood to Kent State, Cambodia and Peking - it's a little supercharged with detail, especially in the long Watergate sections.