Overcoming Organizational Constraints in Training
Overcoming organizational constraints in training is a tricky puzzle that any leader will wind up encountering before their task is through. As their system is established and their dynamic is worked out, the system will continue to grow more complex and therefore expand in resource as well, and at some point, it will hit a barrier beyond which it cannot grow. Without the growing complexity and overlap to facilitate it, the cycle will stall roughly.
So, you’re faced with the problem of overcoming organizational constraints in training. There are many ways in which these constraints may manifest, and all of them are a challenge to overcome. Some are not entirely possible to overpower, while others are at some expense. Let’s take a look at but a few of the more common forms this may take, and what you might do about it.
First is the overload of people with defined roles in the training process. These can be leaders of small study groups or individuals whom the others beg advice on a topic they are excelling in. The demand and momentum and branching of knowledge is going to put more stress on them. There is only one solution for this and that is to redirect some of the workload.
This is involved, and may be a matter of simply finding directives in the roles that are common among different ones, and dividing common work up more. Beyond that … there is an unavoidable bottleneck here at some point.
Another common problem is a loss of interest in incentives. Gamification can lose its power here too. The appeal of whatever reward, abstract or concrete can be gained by individuals or a team can become less novel over time, calling for more lavish incentives. This balloons costs and resources quickly. However without fuel, the engine will not turn.
The best thing to do here is provide an option to go in for a significantly greater ultimate reward if they voted to not take the smaller ones at any point. It will still cost, but the conversion from many small to one large doesn’t actually have to be proportional.
Finally, we come to one of the worse ones, social dynamic corruption. A social dynamic which is formed during organizational training, will inherently corrupt over time due to human randomization. While a tight team may start out, over time, interaction will breed drama, import of emotion from out of the environment and other degrading forces.
There’s only one way to abate this, and that is to make sure the original team template is general enough in design that you can retool it. On occasion, shift the roles and interactions and groupings, to keep the social dynamic on repeated soft reset. It won’t prevent long term breakdown, but it should abate it for the length of training. Constant learning is harder to remedy this with, obviously.
These are just a few of the many forms organizational constraints in training can take. Where there is one, there’s usually at least one more, but they tend to cluster due to their interrelated causes and conditions. Be aware of them, and know how to come prepared and to react.
