Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL
Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL
Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL
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organization, is also m<strong>and</strong>atory. There is no sense in doing training <strong>for</strong> organizational development<br />
if those who oppose the necessary change are not involved.<br />
Another important resource is time. This is often linked with money. But the time is more important.<br />
Training is the process. Any process needs a certain amount of time. Some processes cannot be<br />
stopped half way <strong>and</strong> continued somewhere in a future, let’s say ‘next month’ or ‘when we have<br />
time’. One more analogy with surgery suggests itself – if there is not enough time to complete the<br />
process, then isn’t it better not to do a cut at all?<br />
When training intervention is considered as one of the general instruments <strong>for</strong> facilitating<br />
organizational change (not an urgent surgery <strong>for</strong> a special occasion), then entry points may be<br />
different. In our practice, it was always very good to start with training on Problem Solving (after a<br />
general introduction <strong>and</strong> overview of all main aspects of the organization <strong>and</strong> all main managerial<br />
tools). This training produces a lot of relevant in<strong>for</strong>mation <strong>for</strong> planning the following interventions,<br />
gives participants motivation to apply very effective instruments, allows them to underst<strong>and</strong> how<br />
useful <strong>and</strong> enjoyable it may be working in a group with others (even not experts in the matter), <strong>and</strong><br />
so on. But this training is very hard. Nothing is more difficult, both <strong>for</strong> trainer <strong>and</strong> <strong>for</strong> participants.<br />
Another good entry point proved to be Customer Service <strong>and</strong> Quality Assurance. These themes<br />
allow the right emphasis from the very beginning. Communication Skills <strong>and</strong> Internal Relations<br />
Management are safer, easier to start, easier to manage, allow participants to get acquainted, but<br />
cannot produce very serious impact to overcome inertia <strong>and</strong> initiate the process of real<br />
organizational changes.<br />
With the Strategic Management course we usually prefer to complete the cycle (the whole cycle<br />
takes about 4-5 training interventions over the course of about a year <strong>for</strong> most organizations), but<br />
sometimes it was the best option to start working with the organization. This happened when only<br />
top management <strong>and</strong> shareholders were involved in the first training. In general, it always better to<br />
start the intervention from the training <strong>for</strong> top decision makers. Their involvement <strong>and</strong> commitment<br />
then becomes a good sign <strong>for</strong> others.<br />
Control during the process of training is also specific. One cannot control whether the situation is<br />
where it supposed to be at a certain moment in time because nobody knows where exactly it<br />
should be at any given moment. Conventional ‘training <strong>for</strong> learning things’ may follow a fairly<br />
predictable path in accordance with a pre-designed agenda – <strong>and</strong> produce more or less st<strong>and</strong>ard<br />
expected outputs. <strong>Organizational</strong> development training should be pre-designed in as much detail<br />
as possible, keeping in mind however, that it will never go that way. It is not a plan <strong>for</strong> a trip on a<br />
well-known road. It is rather a plan <strong>for</strong> finding the way through an unknown <strong>for</strong>est. Thus,<br />
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