Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

Training design and delivery
Training design depends on training objectives. The objectives may be different. We are only going
to discuss the type of training intervention that we called ‘training for changing thinking’, which is
organized as a kind of collective cooperative exercise for all relevant members of the organization,
not as learning events for only some of them.
The main objective of such an intervention is removing mental barriers that prevent people from
finding new and more adequate ways of organizing and operating. These barriers are well
protected by cognitive dissonance that will deny anything that seems to be difficult to implement.
The interests of those who do not need any change to happen also protect these barriers. The
challenge for the trainer is to make these things at same time being both understood and accepted
as real, relevant, and inevitable.
This is another paradox with training for organizational development. Training should create an
understanding that the current situation is not satisfactory, and generate a feeling of discomfort
among participants. They will feel badly about the way things are in their organization. That will
create motivation to do something to change the given state to a better one. It is a bit like taking
the zone of comfort (as perceived by members of an organization) away, thus initiating attempts to
move forward and reach it again. However, the same discomfort that should motivate change will
create cognitive dissonance and additional feelings of discomfort about the training itself. People
may understand consciously that ‘sooner or later we will do it, anyway’; ‘it is nothing but truth, and
we should have addressed it long before’, and so on – but still feel dissatisfied. Sometimes it may
cause serious stress. Once more, it is like surgery – being useful, even inevitable, and well
understood as such – does not mean being pleasant. Organizational consciousness is more
similar to a child than an adult (the child is very vulnerable…). General narcosis is impossible. Still,
the job has to be done. This requires very serious preparation by the trainer. He should be
qualified as a trainer, feel well, be in a good mood, very attentive, and extremely positive with
respect to every participant.
Still, the trainer is only the second most important resource for training. The first is the group itself.
For organizational development matters the group should include everyone who is needed to make
the discussion sensible and any mature decision possible. Who is needed depends on the issues
that are going to be addressed, but at the beginning of the process it is always very important that
all leaders of the organization participate. If owners or politicians are involved - they should also
participate. The participation of opposition and enemies, it they are going to stay with the
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