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Back to the Performance Improvement Journal Home PageFebruary, 2006 Editor's Notes: HPT as a Standard Practice Executive Summaries |
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Executive Summaries
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| Performance Support Tools: Delivering Value When and Where It Is Needed by Paul McManus and Allison Rossett, CPT Job aids on steroids? Some call them electronic performance support systems, while others prefer performance support tools. Our interest in this exploratory study was to find out how a handful of savvy professionals was using this emerging form of support. Are organizations deploying them? When deployed, how are they using them? Are they pleased with the resulting contributions? What factors contribute to successful implementation? We asked and answered these questions within the context of Human Performance Technology, because, after all, performance support has implications for both individuals and the organization. Principles to Guide the Development and Use of Effective Performance Measures by David S. Crandon and Kenneth A. Merchant, PhD This article describes four basic principles that executives should follow to ensure that their organizations' measurement systems and measurement-driven processes, which are key elements in the human performance technology model, support organizational alignment and cohesive action. We argue that to be able to generate superior performance companies need to do several things: (1) implement a decision-oriented model of controllable performance; (2) estimate the performance potential for all elements of the model; (3) assign responsibility for all the drivers of performance; and (4) develop a common language of performance that relates operational performance measures and managerial responsibilities to corporate performance objectives, at all levels in an organization. The article describes one company's experience. Innovation: The Other "I" Word Associated with Performance by Jerry L. Harbour, PhD, and Harold S. Blackman, PhD Understanding the explicit empirical relationship between innovations in technology and actual gains in performance may be more difficult than we suspect. Our research to date indicates that innovation can play the role of both a catalyst for subsequent performance improvement efforts and an actual performance improvement mechanism via what we term incremental Type I innovations. Interestingly, however, so-called "radical" innovations rarely beget corresponding radical improvements in performance. Rather, such innovations set the stage for a new cycle of incremental improvements that, over time, add up to very significant performance gains. Although such performance accruals commonly occur, they by no means always occur. Additionally, given the passage of enough time, even frequent within-lineage improvement gains eventually exhibit a pronounced stagnation. Only via a new round of innovation can incremental gains in performance begin anew. From Swift to Swiss: Tactical Decision Games and Their Place in Military Education and Performance Improvement by Donald E. Vandergriff, Major, U.S. Army retired The fundamental nature of warfare has not changed, but changes in the methods and conduct of warfare are shifting. In the past, emphasis has always been on large, identifiable foes with professional standing armies. This article offers specific structural and procedural treatments on how to teach adaptability with the Tactical Decision Game to develop and access the quality and quantity of junior officers demanded by the security challenges that face the Army and the United States. Today, many aspects of the program of instruction, training, management of the institutions responsible for creating the new generation of leaders, and how cadets are accessed into the officer corps is reminiscent of industrial age concepts derived from Frederick Taylor. To counter an array of national threats and opponents and to solve problems at the lowest levels with strategic consequences calls for a synthesis of institutions and courses that deal with leader development into learning organizations. To meet this need, the current educational and training ways and means must be assessed, evaluated, and changed. Weak spots and points of failure in cadet training must be identified, all on behalf of retooling the system in intuitive and adaptive ways that facilitate officer development. Remodeling Leadership: Developing Mature Leaders and Organizational Leadership Systems (an Introduction to the Leadership Maturity Model™) by James W. Armitage, PhD, Nancy A. Brooks, Matthew C. Carlen, MEd, and Scott P. Schulz Companies spend billions annually in search of the silver bullet that will enable them to identify, create, and develop qualified leaders and a strong leadership bench. The mid-1980s brought the emergence, proliferation, and predominance of competency models in response to this need. Such models and their associated 360° assessments are employed with the aim of identifying ability gaps in an organization's leadership teams, rising stars, and leadership hopefuls. Competency models have become so pervasive that increasing dependence on their assessments has led organizations to base staffing strategies, developmental planning processes, succession planning, and even compensation primarily, if not solely, on the outcome of these assessments. But is competency enough? The Leadership Maturity Model™ surpasses competency measurement to examine the synergy between an organization's leaders and its organizational leadership systems, between ability and capability. These two components are key factors in determining a leader's performance effectiveness toward attaining the organization's strategic goals. |
