Strategy One: Training and Education
HRD programs that exemplify this strategy tend to be based on the assumption that change occurs primarily by giving people new skills, knowledge and aptitudes. These talents can then be used not only in the performance of specific functions, such as management or program planning, but also in the accomplishment of change itself. It is assumed that reward and punishment systems, per se, will not change people; rather individuals must be provided with new skills, knowledge and aptitudes that are appropriate to the desired change.
HRD practitioners who embrace a training strategy may take either a deficit or appreciative perspective. Those taking a deficit perspective usually assume that employees will be more effective if they are provided with new skills and knowledge in performing traditional functions and in using new methods or technologies that reflect new attitudes about the workplace. HRD practitioners who take an appreciative perspective view training and education as enhancing existing competencies, as well as identifying settings in which these competencies are most likely to flourish. Appreciative practitioners also consider new methods and technologies to be driving forces. However, these HRD specialists are more likely to look to old, successful patterns in the organization for a response to the new challenges, before declaring, as do the deficit practitioners, that “we must throw out the old and bring in the new!”
I have identified both training and education as ingredients of a comprehensive HRD program in large part because employees at all levels of the organization need both skills and knowledge. They need the tools and techniques to run their organization as it now exists. This requires training and the development of skills. Employees also need concepts and models to make sense of the changes that will inevitably occur in any organization that faces the unpredictability and complexity of our 21st Century world. This requires education and the acquisition of knowledge.
While training and education are closely inter-related, and are not easily distinguished from one another, I will continue to make use of both terms. Hopefully, this will reinforce an appreciative perspective regarding the future. Appreciation encourages not only respect for old, enduring patterns within an organization, but also an anticipation of the future: leaning into the future. Appreciative development in a 21st Century organization involves not only preparation for a world that already exists but also preparation for a world that is yet to be. This principle must be kept in mind when creating an appreciative organization.
