If the appreciative leader is given the opportunity to define a point of entry, she should make this decision on the basis of a systematic assessment of organizational environment and goals, and on the basis of the organization’s potential acceptance of various services. One specific entry point, such as performance appraisal, may seem right for a particular organization, given its current problems and goals. However, if employees would performance appraisals to be too threatening as an entry point, then a less threatening entry service, such as discussions about work, might be selected. This service, in turn, could be designed to lead the participants, and eventually the entire organization, toward recognition of the important role assumed by performance appraisals and other more threatening, but critical, HRD strategies. Another entry point, such as technical training, may make developmental sense, in terms of the sequencing of other HRD strategies. However, some employees might find this technical training to be “beneath them” and unrelated to their career aspirations. More challenging training and education services might first be provided to these employees—providing tangible evidence of this organization’s appreciation for the high-level interests of its employees.
Organizational leaders frequently complain about widespread resistance to their ideas and programs. Taking an appreciative approach, they might instead acknowledge this resistance as an appropriate and valuable sign that the organization is not yet ready for this particular strategy and that less threatening strategies should first be used to prepare the way for the strategies that potentially have a greater impact. Resistance should never serve as an excuse for not planning. Plans do change, but to not plan is to abdicate what control leaders do have over the future of human resource development in their organization.
Unfortunately, decisions concerning the sequencing of various HRD strategies are often made neither on the basis of an assessment of organizational goals nor on the basis of a logical sequence of developmental activities. Frequently, these decisions are based on untested, and even non-stated, assumptions about how people and organizations change. These assumptions often form an elaborate and often unarticulated configuration of concepts, materials, methods, technologies and modes of evaluation through which the process of change is seen. These configurations vary from individual to individual and organization to organization.
To the extent that these configurations are untested and unarticulated, many organizational leaders remain oblivious to their own particular set of assumptions about change. These leaders also may be unaware that other sets of assumptions are equally valuable. In order to increase appreciation of various approaches to human resource development, I offer a list of ten strategies that are commonly found in today’s organizations. Each will be briefly described in terms of three issues: (1) assumptions about change, (2) assumptions about organizational functioning and (3) assumptions about those theories, concepts and tools of human resource development that are most viable.
