No doubt, it is hardwired in us
that we are eager to acquire knowledge and skills that will help us grow be it in
the organizational context or otherwise. Taking advantage of this concern of
employees for individual growth, organizations offer training to its employees
to hone up their job-related knowledge and skills so that they become more
efficient in their execution of the assigned tasks as also to advance in their
careers. This in turn is hoped to improve organizational effectiveness and
efficiency.
But this seldom happens in the
real work-situation. For, study after study—beginning with Ohio State
leadership studies of the 1950s— found that trained-employees often regress to their
old ways of doing things in absence of a context for the changed behaviour.
It is of course a different
matter that even after such findings, organizations keep spending enormous sums
in training their employees but pay least attention to create a context for the
trained employees to look at their jobs from a changed perspective as learnt
from the training school. The reason is simple: employees returning from
training charged with right skills and right attitude find it difficult to
implement the change, for their units are so deeply entrenched in the
established ways of doing things that they simply resist change with all their
might. To put it otherwise these newly
trained people have no power to change the system around them.
The
underlying reason for this failure is: organizations are not mere ‘aggregation
of individuals’ but are ‘systems of interacting elements.’ It is the
organizational structure, processes, leadership styles, organizational culture and
HR policies which define the roles and responsibilities of individuals that
ultimately drives the organizational behaviour and performance. And unless this
very system is changed, the change contemplated through training cannot be brought
in sustained.
So,
what is first required for changing the performance of organizations is
changing the organizational practices and policies by the top management and
then only improvement in individual deficiencies set right by training can give
results that are sustainable for long.
The study carried out by Michael
Beer, et al (2016) identified certain ‘silent-killers’ that come in the way of
making a chang n the organizatuon: one, unclear direction on strategy and
values of the organization; two, senior executives seldom work as a team nor do they exhibit the required
change in their own behaviour; three, a top-down style of leadership that
allows honest movement of the knowledge of problems that the unit is infested
with to the top; four, no coordination
across the organization owing to poor organizational design; five leadership
paying scant attention to talent issues; and six, employee’s fear to share
their understanding of the problems that come in the way of organizational
effectiveness to the top-management.
And the authors of the study opine
that unless these obstacles are addressed first, nothing tangible can be
accomplished from training and educational programs. It’s a different matter that people are eager
to acquire new knowledge and skills that will help them improve their
capabilities and thereby advance in their careers. Indeed, employees evince great interest in
building up their knowledge base. But, mere acquisition of knowledge by individuals
would mean nothing for the organizations. Unless, they couple this acquired
knowledge with the passion to apply it in the organizational context, the newly
acquired knowledge remains as idle rescore. Again, individual passions may not matter at
all, unless the leader of the unit takes initiative in creating right atmosphere
for the new knowledge to bear fruits.
So, the sum and substance of the
research of Michael Beer, Magnus Finnstrom and Derek Schrader (2016) is: senior
executives must first attend to organizational design—both at the top and unit
by unit—to create a fertile ground for the learning imparted through training
to bear fruits.
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