Organizational Development and Participation
The process of organizational development inevitably involves participation, and participation most often happens through meetings.In fact, participation is not limited to organizational development; it should occur as a normal part of daily work, whenever decisions are made or projects are carried out.
However, there is a paradox in many organizations: they champion organizational development and participation, yet resist holding meetings. This contradiction is one of the biggest barriers to both organizational development and cultural innovation.
When defining and embedding a vision, mission, and core values, member participation is essential. This is where facilitation comes in.
The same is true when restructuring the organization, setting performance indicators, allocating responsibilities, driving projects, or coordinating collaborative work.
In many ways, organizational development is itself the process of gradually increasing member participation through facilitation.
What We Mean by “Participation”
Here, participation means that members share their opinions in the decision-making process and that these opinions have a genuine influence on the final decision.
Participation is not a simple “yes or no” matter — it’s a question of degree.
For more on this concept, see The Ladder of Participation: https://brunch.co.kr/@giewookkoo/192.
Why Participation Matters
Participation is important for three main reasons:
- It leverages the knowledge and information of members — a valuable resource for making better decisions.
- It boosts morale and engagement — having a voice in decisions increases self-esteem, a sense of accomplishment, and belonging, which in turn fosters enthusiasm, commitment, and initiative.
- It enhances organizational fairness — when people feel decisions are made fairly, satisfaction with the organization rises.
Despite these benefits, participation often fails to materialize in practice, leaving organizational development as little more than a slogan without meaningful change.
Common reasons include:
- Believing that members lack useful information.
- Assuming members are self-interested and will not provide ideas that benefit the organization.
- Fearing that participation will take too much time.
- Lacking the skills to handle diverse opinions effectively.
- Strong resistance to holding meetings.
Meetings and Reports
For an organization to succeed, it must make a series of wise decisions — and that means decisions based on sufficient, relevant information.
An organization should make full use of the knowledge and information its members hold, and doing so is, by definition, a form of participation.
Broadly speaking, organizations tap into member knowledge in two ways: meetings and written reports. Unfortunately, both of these processes often leave a great deal of room for improvement. Improving the way these knowledge resources are gathered and used is a core challenge for organizational development.
The Role of the Facilitator
Looking specifically at meetings, one of the most effective ways to improve them is to have competent facilitators.
A skilled facilitator can ensure that meetings make the best possible use of the group’s knowledge resources.
However, such facilitators are not developed overnight.
In most cases, it takes at least five years of consistent training and practice to develop strong facilitation skills. Because of this long timeline, many organizations neglect facilitator development entirely.
That said, plenty of organizations do invest steadily over such timeframes in other specialized roles. This suggests that the real problem is not the duration, but a lack of understanding of the importance and feasibility of facilitator development.
Even with full recognition of its value, training facilitators for five or more years is still a challenge — but if an organization wants a truly horizontal, collaborative culture, developing facilitators is essential.
The Traditional “Train Everyone” Approach
Traditionally, when a skill gap was identified, the common response was to train all relevant members through short courses.
For facilitation, this approach often fails — especially for skills that require long-term, complex training — and can lead to a cycle like this:
- Provide all members with a minimal amount of training.
- Members fail to acquire sufficient skill.
- Attempts to apply the skill in the organization result in failure.
- Opportunities to use the skill decrease.
- Without practice, skill growth stagnates.
- The necessary capabilities are never developed.
Some capabilities, like mindset shifts, can improve with short training.
But facilitation is a sophisticated skill that requires an extended, structured training process.
The “train everyone lightly” model almost guarantees poor results here.
The Minimum Resource Approach (MRA)
The Minimum Resource Approach is a practical method for developing skilled facilitators — a prerequisite for effective organizational development — while minimizing cost and maximizing impact.
The steps are:
- Select the minimum number of people needed for the role (e.g., 5 per division, 2 per department, 1 per team).
- Provide these individuals with extensive initial training (around 50 hours).
- Have them observe expert facilitators handling real organizational issues.
- Let them tackle simple issues themselves, with expert observation and feedback.
- Progress to more complex issues, still with expert feedback.
- Form peer learning circles, gradually reducing the frequency of expert intervention.
- Graduates become experts themselves and train others in the organization.
This method offers dual benefits:
- Direct problem-solving during training which immediately benefits the organization.
- Indirect learning for participants who experience skilled facilitation firsthand.
Because the training is embedded in real work, it avoids the cost of separate training programs while delivering both immediate and long-term value. I call this the Minimum Resource Approach (MRA), and it has already been applied successfully in both large corporations and public institutions.
Case studies will be shared at an upcoming conference.
Conclusion
- Remote work
- Agile adoption
- Becoming a learning organization
- Digital transformation
- Organizational culture innovation
- Building a horizontal organizational culture
These change initiatives may have different names, but they all rely on participation — making the most of members’ intellectual resources.
Ultimately, they are all about improving the way knowledge and information are processed.And this, in turn, depends on skilled facilitators.
Among the available methods for developing them, the Minimum Resource Approach is one of the most effective.
It is my hope that this method will prove useful to consulting firms and organizations seeking to drive meaningful organizational development.
