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Back to the Performance Improvement Journal Home PageMarch, 2004 - Special Issue: Masters Series Editor’s Notes: Client-centric Performance Technology
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Executive Summaries
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| Sense and Nonsense in HPT by Dale Brethower, PhD Sense and nonsense abound within all academic or professional areas, including human performance technology. Both sense and nonsense exist because of the fallibility of the humans who contribute to the field and the fact that sense, from one perspective, can be nonsense from another. For example, “instruction improves performance” is both sense and nonsense. It is sense if instruction is supported by specific organizational variables, but nonsense otherwise. The article presents many other examples to support the general notion that it is nonsense to believe that any single-variable solution will add value. Human performance technology projects will usually have no value unless we work systemically. Working systemically requires considering the organization as a whole, measuring multiple variables, and collaborating with many people in the organization. ISPI’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Performance Technology offer explicit and valuable guidance in separating sense from nonsense in human performance technology. The Odd Couple: From OD and HPT to High-Performance Consulting by Tim Johnson and the Bandag Performance Consulting Team Combining a human performance technology organization and an organizational design organization can sometimes result in a dysfunctional marriage--assuming the bride and groom even get to the alter. This article describes one group’s transition brought about by a merger of the two functions into one department. A new department was created to serve as internal business consultants. The principal consultants in the group came from strong organizational design and human performance technology/instructional systems design backgrounds. The group was able to use a common model to examine its own processes and approaches to consulting with their clients, and also as a tool for working with internal clients. Performance Improvement Dilemmas in South Africa by Belia Nel, MA, CPT Performance improvement initiatives are challenging in a developing country, especially a country like South Africa, which has strong first-world characteristics. The social, political, legal, and economical dimensions have a distinctive influence on implementing performance improvements change processes. The formal and governmental sectors should leverage the untapped potential of the informal sector through sustained change initiatives by providing a strategic approach to performance improvement. Too much emphasis is being placed at the formal sector; and to a lesser degree at the governmental level. The greatest need for performance improvement occurs at the informal level, as this sector is mostly unstructured. The vast majority of the future economic development in South Africa will come from this sector. There is an opportunity to unleash the potential of this sector, which will also on an ongoing basis feed the formal and government sectors. This article focuses on the performance improvement practices for South Africa that will provide the necessary framework to develop and design performance improvement initiatives in this developing country. Know Your Client’s Business by Geary Rummler, PhD, CPT, and Kimberly Morrill, MA, CPT Understanding your client’s business is a fundamental requirement of an effective performance consultant. Specifically, you gain three distinct advantages regarding problem identification and problem solving by profiling the business: 1) Credibility with the client--The client understands that you know their business and you know what you are talking about. 2) Speed and accuracy when responding to a request for help--This is critical because of the bias against taking the time for serious analysis. 3) Proactive identification of opportunities to improve performance--Action versus reaction. This article presents a framework and tools to efficiently and effectively profile your client’s business. Why wouldn’t you take advantage of an opportunity to do your work faster, smarter, and better? Your clients will notice the difference. Winning Every Time: Six Ways to Make Large-Scale Performance Interventions Succeed by Ray Svenson, CPT The reasons that large-scale performance interventions usually fail have more to do with engaging and working with the sociopolitical system and human dynamics than with doing a good job of planning, analysis, and design. As performance technologists, we tend to focus on the arts of analysis and design. This article gives six ways you can engage the sociopolitical system to greatly increase the odds of success on large projects including: 1) Getting power from the power structure, 2) Engaging key stakeholders, 3) Finding the natural structure, 4) Building confidence through storytelling, 5) Designing conversations to build commitment, and 6) Managing the predictable mysteries of human dynamics. Dealing with these issues successfully may not be performance technology per se, but performance technology will be ignored if the human sociopolitical system is ignored. Systems, Nontrivial Machines, Circular Causality, and Other Ghosts Haunting Performance Improvement Technology by Klaus D. Wittkuhn, CPT Performance technology has several unsolved questions: 1) A general systems theory approach will not be enough in performance technology. Instead, a human performance system has to be developed, designed specifically to serve the needs of managers and consultants. 2) Human performance cannot be engineered. People only can be influenced. Designing a performance system is an attempt to engineer the nonhuman elements of a system to influence people’s behavior. 3) Declaring “cause analysis” to be a major step in the performance improvement process does not reflect systemic thinking but linear cause-and-effect thinking. As systems usually show dense interactions between their elements, there will be circular causality that in turn does not allow the identification of causes. 4) A problem definition is always based on underlying assumptions that may prevent us from seeing creative solutions. When this occurs, it is very unlikely that we can identify the gap between current and desired performance. Thus, we will need to go through several iterations to reveal the complete picture.
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