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

time. As an American proverb says, ‘Even nine women can not give birth a child in one
month’. Training is a process, which requires to be developed and completed in respect of
each planned change that should happen in participants’ minds. It takes time.
Officials (in countries without wide understanding of the nature of training events) often try to
include in training programme more topics, than it is actually possible to process within the time
allocated for training. They often think they are smart enough and do not need long
explanations. Just briefly, tell them, what they should do. It may be difficult to resist to their
request to expand the agenda within the same event. However, it is impossible to have a
satisfactory result just saying to participants, how they should work, and live. They will listen,
understand and agree, but do not change. The changes may happen, when certain idea come
not as trainer’s statement, but has aroused as a discovery in trainees’ minds. It requires
relevant time for getting certain experience and processing it by the intellectual work of
participants. It requires even more time for the repetition and transforming new understanding
into new skills.
For example, theoretical explanation of what may be called a problem takes about 20-30
minutes, including review of the most common mistakes. After that all participants are happy,
they say it is interesting and they have understood it very well. However, when asked to
formulate any problem, they face tremendous difficulties, and it usually takes considerable time
before the majority of group became able to identify a problem in a right way. Goal setting
takes another half a day. Action planning takes one more day. At the end of this day, the vision
of problem and its formulation may be drastically changed and then additional time is
necessary to put things in order and complete the task. Before the task will be completed and
positive feedback received, trainees would not have a feeling that they really can do it. Instead
of rising self-esteem and readiness to change their practice, participants may stay disappointed
and keep away from the opportunities to experience such a disappointment once more.
Thus, the training may prevent required changes, rather than facilitate them. Exactly like in
surgery - if there is no enough time to complete operation on a heart, it may be better not to
begin it at all.
On another hand, training event should never last longer, than necessary to accommodate the
task and meet objectives of the client. Business people are often disappointed if they feel they
spend more time than it would be necessary to have the same result. A laziness of trainers,
who tend to plan less than possible to do within training session, may cause the laziness of
participants, low level of involvement and, finally, intellectual efforts of trainees may be not
sufficient to produce a result. They will not change, because positive changes, especially in
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