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Back to the Performance Improvement Journal Home PageNovember/December, 2004 Editor’s Notes: The “H” in HPT
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Executive Summaries
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| Project Alignment: Ensuring Successful Development and Implementation From Day One by Steven W. Villachica, PhD, CPT, Deborah L. Stone, CPT, and John Endicott Just as any building rests on its foundations, the development and implementation of a successful performance improvement project rests on its alignment with the larger organization. This article argues for a formal alignment phase to begin any such project. The focus of this phase is on a facilitated alignment meeting where participants from the larger organization review and revise the contents of an alignment packet. To this end, the authors define alignment; note its absence from the professional literature; discuss examples of aligned and misaligned projects; and provide strategies, tools, and templates for ensuring successful project alignment. Alignment Coaching: A Broader Perspective on Business Coaching by John Lazar and William Bergquist Coaching in organizations often focuses either on how to address issues effectively or how to perform well in a situation, given a decision to move forward and a strategy to meet success criteria. There is, however, another possible focus of coaching, one that confronts making sense of one’s life and the fundamental values and meaning that get expressed through choice and action: alignment coaching. This article offers a fresh perspective on business coaching, distinguishing alignment coaching from its performance and executive coaching brethren. Using a case study illustration, further distinctions are drawn about the types of issues clients face and the type of business coaching that, when matched, can provide “best fit” to achieve desired results. Integrated Performance Improvement: Managing Change Across Process, Technology, and Culture by Martin Marquardt, Kevin Smith, and Jesse L. Brooks Organizations today are constantly searching for even the slightest competitive advantage and cost savings. The performance of an organization is key to achieving either outcome. Unfortunately, most organizations take a tunnel-vision approach to improving performance. Costly enterprise resource planning implementations are often rebuked by employees, training and cultural efforts are looked at as “programs of the day,” and process improvements are rarely rigorous enough to provide sustained results. Yet, when improvement efforts to these key factors‹culture, process, and technology‹are managed at in an integrated manner, success can be achieved and sustained over the long term. Only by understanding the inter-relationship between these business-critical factors can lasting performance be sustainable. Beyond Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: What Do People Strive For? by Kimberly A. Gordon Rouse Motivating employees is a challenge that performance technologists are faced with daily. Many performance technologists refer to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when considering this challenge. The 24 goals that comprise motivational systems theory are presented in this article as an alternative to Maslow’s five needs. Applying this theory’s goals to the workplace setting may be useful when attempting to motivate performers. Defining Normal and Abnormal Problems in Disintegrating Systems by Ichak Adizes Companies, like individuals, go through lifecycles. They are born and grow, and unless management knows what to do and how to lead, they age, disintegrate, and eventually die. As an organization makes the transition from one lifecycle stage to the next, change often causes disintegration problems. Most organizational problems are the result of a system that is falling apart. While it may appear that the way to prevent systems from falling apart is to prevent change, such an approach is the equivalent of committing organizational suicide. Leaders’ role is to guide the necessary change that creates new problems, integrate the organization so it can solve those problems, prepare it to be changed again, and have new problems. It is vital to distinguish normal problems, transitions that organizations should experience in order to move to the next stage of the lifecycle, from abnormal problems. The treatment at any stage of the lifecycle is to remove abnormal problems so the organization can progress to the next stage of the lifecycle and experience a new set of normal problems. The Performance Technologist’s Toolbox: Surveys by Anne F. Marrelli, PhD, CPT This article is the first in a series devoted to data-collection methods. An in-depth knowledge of data-collection methods is an essential competency for performance technologists because the systematic collection of data is required to meet several of the Standards of Performance Technology. Applications of surveys in performance technology are explained, including performance and cause analysis, evaluation of interventions, organizational development, multi- rater feedback, benchmarking, and competency modeling studies. The advantages and disadvantages of surveys and complementary methods of data collection are also described. Guidelines for survey development are provided and followed by a case study that illustrates how a survey is used in one organization to collect data.
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