People can have marvelous intentions and goals, dynamic task forces, fantastic skills training, but if they return to an environment in which everyone is unconsciously set up to reinforce the old behaviors and punish the new, they will still behave in the old ways in order to survive. Third, job-integrated skills training in properly sequenced phases is essential, to help people handle the new roles and responsibilities that participation requires. This is true both for managers and subordinates. In cultures so painful that people are deeply invested in denial of their feelings and behaviors in order to survive, there will be great resistance to any raising of consciousness. Gradual adjustment processes will have to be invented to help such people face their pain and make the needed transitions.
Training has to move in step with the changes in both the group and the individual.
It has to be job-integrated so that it is practiced, and congruent with the person's work role and relationships. Arranging and sequencing all of this in a way that is responsive to the organic growth of the change process is what I mean by orchestration. The participative change project at the Bethlehem Steel Company in Pennsylvania is an inspiring example of such an effort on a huge scale. The consulting firm of Weisbord, Block and Petrella worked in conjunction with Ben Scribner, the internal specialist at Bethlehem Steel, to prepare and train a group of selected managers to go back and train others in their departments, before large scale participative change could even begin. When it did begin, people at all levels were introduced to each phase of the change through experiential workshops, using a particular theme which then became an integrated part of their daily job.