Organizational Training
As a group, we have much to learn about organizational training.
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In a rapidly changing environment we depend on new or improved skills to survive, but we're not well prepared to train them. We are even less prepared to train organizations. Business groups, in particular. But also armies and countries.
System simulation offers hope, because it can provide trial and error practice, the basis for all learning. But development is often too slow to offer immediate relief, even if we had adequate technical know-how to do the job. It would help to shorten simulation delivery time.
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You only need sense the strangeness of sending organizations to school to realize there are no such facilities. We don't send groups to school to learn group skills.
There are some obvious reasons. Practice sessions cost much time, effort, and money, and would have a negative impact on earnings and stock evaluation, despite longer term benefits. Employees would have to be available for practice sessions, which might have to be conducted at awkward times. They would need to consider the effort worthwhile, first of all, and they would probably have to be paid for their effort as well.
Professional musicians and sports teams depend on practice sessions. They take this to be a natural part of their work and spend much more time practicing than performing. Their careers depend on it. Yet the business community, which has to contend with matters of survival, apparently has decided not to expend capital on group preparedness.
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A major training difficulty comes from the fact that organizations are highly interactive entities with many feedback loops and channels of communication. They are severely non-linear. For this reason, stability is difficult to maintain. Even subtle differences in operating conditions can throw the system for a loop. Personality clashes, alone, can create inefficiencies and even disorder and confusion. In addition, organizational objectives are often not clear or focused, making it difficult to decide what skills are needed and what training to conduct.
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