A few weeks ago, I decided to search the iTunes App Store to see what might be available to support leadership and management development training. I found half a dozen or so serious contenders for mobile learning content in this area. I'll admit to wasting money on a couple of solutions that proved disappointing, but did find three totally free apps that put the former to shame.
HBR Tips from Harvard Business Review is quite simply a daily digest of edited hints and tips from various publications. Some are more relevant than others, depending on your own circumstances, but overall they provide a range of useful "thoughts for the day". You're also able to forward individual tips via Twitter and other methods. I regularly share the most useful tips via Twitter and further into my organisation's Yammer network.
GoodPractice Top Tips for Managers from Good Practice Limited offers a wide range of tips more targeted at a management audience. The tips are organised into three categories: personal performance, management skills and communication skills. Within each category, the tips are broken down further into between four and twelve topics such as decision making, managing your team and written communication.
Each individual tip, e.g. decision-making essentials, is covered very well, with a good balance of background theory and practical steps. If you find a tip that you want to refer back to again, you can mark it as a favourite and later retrieve this from a fourth Favourites category. I've not counted them all, but there have to be around 100 tips. One tip is chosen by random and featured on the home page.
If you're looking for an app to support leadership skills training, then MindTools from MindTools.com would meet your needs. This app particularly focuses on popular leadership and management theories, the sort that you'd study on an MBA course. Hence I feel this is more appropriate for a leadership development audience, although clearly a management population would benefit from the material.
There are over 100 tools, divided into twelve categories, such as problem solving, time management and communication skills. Examples of tools within these topic areas are root cause analysis, the urgent/improvement matrix and the Johari Window, respectively.
Each theory is supported by charts and diagrams where appropriate and you can forward individual tools to others via e-mail. You can also elect to receive the free Mind Tools newsletter every week that delivers new tools to your in-box. There is also a useful search feature, which enables you to quickly review the tools available based on your choice of words.
This particular app would also be a great tool for trainers, as the content will enable you to get up-to-speed quickly with the background on a particular model.
Together, these three apps provide a great iPhone-based resource. They don't yet appear to be available for other phone types and as they don't exist in iPad-friendly versions, I understand they only appear iPhone-sized on these larger devices.
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