We’ve all heard about the “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign. I want to start a campaign using the same slogan to boring training!

By Naveen Chamoli, Director, Planman Consulting & Faculty, IIPM

There’s a common phrase used by organisational development and Human Resource professionals, when identifying kinks in the growth of an organisation or company - “It’s a training issue.” When progress stagnates and obstacles appear, you can retrace the path of movement and discover that things started to go wrong when someone wasn’t trained properly. This finger pointing would never have existed if the ground rules were followed. Let’s get some facts straight. A good training program is participant-centric that means the program should be about the participants, not the trainer or the training department. It should focus on the people who are there to learn new skills. People learn by doing. Great training uses an exciting blueprint to keep the participants interested and active. So please, before you schedule your next round of training, make sure it’s fun and interesting. If it’s (y-a-w-n) boring, you’re wasting your time and money and losing credibility with your employees. If you value them and the talent they bring to their jobs, give them the opportunity to learn something new, something that they can use to improve your property. Remember, training and development is an
investment, not an expenditure. In order to grow, you have to be trained or you become what someone has famously described as a yesterday person in a tomorrow world!

In a committed endeavour for the practice what I preach, I decided to research a new phenomenon in the training circles that promises to add a lot of zest and excitement to corporate India’s training programs : Outbound management development programs

A daunting task because the secondary information was hardly available.

What is all this hype about adventurebased training?

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s in the US and Europe there was a boom in the use of adventure-based training for purposes of corporate development. The novelty and excitement of a zip line and thrill of rappelling stimulated many possibilities for learning. Corporate adventure training was a new field with much promise. The evidence supporting the positive outcomes of outdoor education applied to corporate settings has been largely supportive. While the boom has since plateaued and matured in its professionalism in US and Europe, in India adventure-based training is perhaps still the most underutilised training method with perhaps the greatest potential.

WHAT IS OMD?
The generic title Outdoor Management Development (OMD) is in fairly common usage in the UK to describe training courses that have two common features. Firstly, OMD training courses are residential training events that have specific training aims or objectives that it seeks to achieve. Typically, OMD training courses tend to have training aims or objectives which seek to improve delegates’ effectiveness in achieving the goals of their organisation. Secondly, they do not take place exclusively in a training room, lecture theatre or ‘classroom’, (as is the case with many training courses), and involve some activity, often out of doors.

There is a wide variety of recreational activities, leisure activities, incentive events, competitions, and challenges that take place outdoors. Though people take part in these activities for their own sake, some people make use of the outdoors as a vehicle to achieve something else- to build self-esteem amongst young people of the outdoors or to improve a department’s performance at work. OMD is concerned with the latter of these purposes.

Paradoxically, the label OMD does not just refer to training courses that use the outdoors. Many OMD courses do not take place completely out-of-doors, are not attended by managers and provide specific skills training rather than open-ended development. For example, some courses I have been involved in (like team-building exercises), have not ventured beyond the front lawn of a hotel, while other courses have used activities which can take place as easily inside a building as in the outdoors. These OMD courses do not fit the pre-conceptions of many people who expect to be involved in adventurous activities such as rock climbing, abseiling and raft building.

This has led experts to suggest that OMD cannot be considered a separate definable activity from any other form of management development and that a better description would be “Management development by experiential learning, process reviews and trainer inputs”.

The OMD facilitators – Participants– differing Perspectives!
The most crucial issue in training is clarity of thought, a focused objective that is easily relatable, comprehensible and collectively agreed upon by the receivers of the exercise. Sadly, this was conspicuously missing in this instance. The wires between learning and experiencing (both academically and in real terms) were crossed with both parties striking out on different routes. However, all agreed that reviews that were too shallow or too deep could be harmful to the learning process and that their task as facilitators was to make learning easy to help learners develop their own learning abilities. For that to happen, the facilitators agreed that their training and debriefing methods should be as transparent as possible and that they do not take over and try to do people’s learning for them. Further, they had often observed core inner issues surfacing and being worked through, issues that may have been left unattended in daily life . Also the intense physical and emotional challenge of more adventurous courses meant that emotional and physical limits are reached, stretched and exceeded. Emotions generated on an OMD course included belonging, caring and happiness. Facilitators felt that OMD can be rich in metaphors. They claimed that the complexity of living outdoors is a metaphor for the complexity of business and the complexity of living with change at work.

On the basis of an exhaustive discussion and study, a simple guideline for facilitators to maximise the objective of the OMD program:
1. ASK learners what is helping and hindering their learning, so that they themselves can benefit from any changes that might follow.

Focus on Learners’ own insights and perspectives in the process of learning as it is likely to have a major influence on what
learning strategies will be most successful. While doing this-

2. DEMONSTRATE their own confidence in the process of learning from experience.

Do this by ensuring that their many facilitative roles include the role of being a learner. By trying to be better learners they become better facilitators. They should recognise that everyone in a learning group (including ourselves) is both a learner as well as a facilitator of other people’s learning.

3. NOTICE the realities and possibilities with this group of learners. How they work with current experience matters more than what worked well in another time and place with other people. This approach keeps learners centre- stage and it focuses on the obvious but essential elements of learning from experience - what learners experience and how learners learn from these experiences. Within a single group, there can be a wide variety of valued experiences; with each person telling a very different story about what most affected their learning and development (rather than all having similar experiences and learning similar things from the same event). On the basis of facilitators’ feedback on the participants’ attitude, approach, acceptance, understanding and final takeaway from the program and a group of participants for an OMD, I have categorised the latter under four main heads :

1. The Differentiators – 43 per cent
These were participants who were aroused by the different world they found, and they wanted their world of work to be more like this one. They were most affected by the course as a whole. With a view of ‘worlds of difference’ they learnt mostly by: picturing what their world could be like.

2. The Spirituals - 27 per cent
These were participants who recovered from their ‘low points’, ending up with a ‘net gain’ in confidence, partly by transforming their ‘lows’ into useful learning. They were most affected by separate experiences. They were learning mostly by: private reflection and making resolutions.

3. The Energisers -21 per cent
These were participants who were concerned with getting personal or group energy flowing and with making adjustments so that energy is used productively. They were most affected by: similarities between experiences. They were learning mostly by: ‘tuning’ energy flow to improve performance.

4. The Change agents - 9 per cent
These were participants who made breakthroughs of some kind, as if they have changed gear or changed levels rather than simply made adjustments. They were most affected by: one experience which stood out. They were learning mostly by: letting go and performing well. What company trainers look for in OMD providers? In-house trainers obviously understand the culture and issues better. I interviewed in-depth seven training managers. Facing novel situations was seen by one training manager as key in developing a learning culture in his organisation. Most agreed that OMD courses force collaboration, connection with others and mutual support. Networking is a key outcome. This is consistent with the skills required of managers while at work.

Although OMD is often seen as providing ‘team benefits’ five companies which were interviewed expressed that they had observed growth in their company people through other areas too. Some of them were:

At times, however, the trainers feel that participants have a low expectation when they come for OMD. One trainer noted, “I see people turning up expecting to be entertained – they play along, say the expected words and don’t take it seriously”.

According to him in such a case OMD is good for short term sparkle – real learning takes a long time, and that’s where coaching is most effective. Two training managers who were averse to risk felt that they should be able to provide value for money.
Such trainers could fall into the trap of providing low impact training which is more measurable and politically ‘safe’.

All trainers opined that in India the OMD facilitators need to be very careful about the choice of location and have a good check on resource providers.

What companies and company managers who send their people for OMD programs see and what they want!
The seven companies I researched who had sent their executives for OMD programs registered improvements in productivity, quality, organisational strength, customer service and shareholder value. They received fewer customer complaints and felt that they were more likely to retain executives who had been on OMD.

Experiential training combines development (change and growth) with training (learning specific skills). Development training accelerates learning and cultivates the habit of learning from life. This was best understood by the responses of the companies that sponsored their participants and from the participants themselves.

Among the benefits to these companies that outsourced OMD programs for their executives; there were improvements in:

• Retaining executives who received training (35 per cent)
• Organisational strength (50 per cent)
   Bottom-line profitability (22 per cent)
• Reducing customer complaints (34 per cent)
• Productivity of executives (53 per cent)
• Quality (48 per cent)
• Customer service (39 per cent)
• Cost reductions (23 per cent)

Most companies were of the view that an OMD definitely impacted and builds the organisational learning culture. Three senior managers saw OMD as an important part of creating or maintaining a learning culture. One stated that it helps in realising that cheese could always move and that it stirs the pot and wakes everyone and everything up. He stressed that the style of ‘teaching’ was important as it set an example of the way that an organisation could run. Most felt that OMD offered common, shared, public experiences where participants could be observed by each other and management, outside the confines and political behaviour of the office. Because everything is public, they felt that there is virtually no hiding place, unlike a classroom where people can claim that they already work in a certain way. Most senior management felt that they needed team players who could work in a matrix system, understand issues of all departments and operate with everyone and OMD could help build that perspective.

What participants/delegates to OMD programs see and what they want!
OMD participants definitely like the fun element involved in an OMD program. They agree that it depends on the facilitator to see to it that they get to see the serious side of learning in the form of the fun and games. What appealed to a large chunk of the 100 participants interviewed was the intense physical and emotional challenges involved. They felt that their emotional limits are reached, stretched and also at times exceeded to improve personal potential. Unanimously all agreed that personal feedback and a continuous review of how they are doing in the program is what differentiates a good OMD from the other.
Overall among the benefits to the participants of the OMD/experiential were

• Improved working relationships with their team members reported by 80 per cent of executives)
• Better working relationships with immediate supervisors (71 per cent)
• Better understanding of self (67 per cent )
• Working relationships with peers (63 per cent)
• Job satisfaction (61 per cent)
• Conflict reduction (52 per cent)
• Organisational commitment (44 per cent)
• Working relationships with clients (37 per cent)

The Flip Side
But there were also the perceived risks, the challenge to get employees to participate, the cost, the time involved, and a lack of conclusive evidence. There was also no standardisation or qualification system for outdoor adventure trainers. And it only takes a couple of programs to get some bad press to make it difficult to sustain growth for a new field.

To summarise
Powerful learning experiences in an OMD seem to result from a combination of general factors such as:

• positive and open orientation towards learning,
• high levels of involvement and responsibility,
• a varied and eventful programme,
• a strong group support for risk taking.

There is significant congruence between the ‘Expectations of managers at Work’ and the benefits of OMD particularly in the areas of personal growth, and developing team-working skills.

Finally a simple and definitive message for all training managers: “If you want your training session to make a dramatic and lasting impact in addition to being fun, choose experiential training. While the participants enjoy the activity they would acquire tools they can actually apply to the workplace meaningfully, effectively and constructively to make a palpable and tangible difference.

Prof. Naveen Chamoli is Director, Planman Consulting and IIPM Faculty. He is also an Outbound Management Development Specialist and conducted several programmes with organisations like Colgate Palmolive, Hindustan Levers Network, Electrolux, HCL Technologies and Cheil Communicatuons... to name a few.