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Back to the Performance Improvement Journal Home PageMay/June, 2004 Editor’s Notes: Producing and Measuring Results
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Executive Summaries
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| Requiem for Bethlehem: The Company Went
Broke -- The Learning Was Priceless by Marvin Weisbord In 2003, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, builder of the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge, went bankrupt and its assets were sold to a rival firm. Bethlehem was the company where Frederick Taylor, the “father of scientific management,” refined his famous productivity system at the dawn of the 20th century. Eighty years later the author helped Bethlehem undo Taylorism. What had once been an ingenious solution was now the backdrop for acrimonious labor relations and a debilitating decrease in productivity and quality. Weisbord describes how he and his colleagues discovered how to make systems thinking experiential rather than conceptual, helping Bethlehem revolutionize its way of working. Though the improvements came too late, alternative principles for workplace improving pioneered at Bethlehem have had wide impact everywhere, notably getting the whole system in the room and having all workers connect their own jobs with everyone else’s and experience their collective impact on the economics and technology of their work systems. Designing and Facilitating Performance-Based Diversity Training by Tyrone A. Holmes Twenty-first century America is one of the most culturally diverse societies on Earth. This diversity brings many potential benefits, such as improved individual and organizational performance, improved customer service, and an improved bottom line. However, to realize these benefits, we must actively work to create inclusive environments geared toward the success of a diverse array of individuals. To create such environments, organization members must develop a core set of attitudes, behaviors, and skills that allow them to communicate, resolve conflicts, and solve problems in culturally diverse settings. This article describes eight diversity competencies and introduces a diversity intervention model that can be used to facilitate training and improve performance in each of these competency areas. The Triple Win: The Missing Link in Improving the Effectiveness of Training Programs by David C. Forman Most companies do a poor job of implementing change -- both major strategic change and more tactical initiatives such as training programs. There are several reasons for this lack of execution. First, most training vendors are more interested in selling products than in helping to implement the ones that exist. Second, implementation is everyone’s responsibility -- and therefore no one’s. Companies typically don’t have a Director of Implementation position. So these responsibilities often fall through the cracks. And third, there is a dearth of frameworks and models to provide tangible value in implementing training programs. This article presents one such pragmatic framework for improving the use and implementation of training programs in the enterprise. Shared Risk, Shared Reward: A Profit Model for HPT Consultants and Clients by Rhett Brymer, Nathan Fisher, and Ben Wiant The profit models for human performance technology consulting traditionally have not allowed professionals in the field to reap the deserved rewards for performance improvement realized in client organizations. This article presents a case for an increase in client and consultant benefit through a shared risk-shared reward business model that effectively transitions human performance technology consulting from a short-term focus on solution design and delivery to a longer-term focus on value-added results. The move to a shared risk-shared reward model would not only encourage greater emphasis on improving the client’s bottom line but would also increase the consultant’s reward for delivering value-added results. Applications of Formative and Descriptive Evaluations in Online Training by Chih-Hsiung Tu The evaluation of training faculty performance is a major institutional consideration for improving training and determining the timing of promotion. The common techniques used in evaluating teaching are peer evaluations and student evaluations. These methods are plagued by inconsistent results because the aspects evaluated in online teaching and online learning differ and lack of understanding of the instructor’s teaching philosophy exists. This article proposes a formative and descriptive evaluation that integrates both peer and student evaluation of teaching.
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