March 2002
Volume 41/Number 3
Toward
High-Performance Organizations
by Edward E. Lawler III
In a global economy, many organizations seek a competitive advantage by adopting new approaches to organizational performance. Edward E. Lawler III and his colleagues have been studying the management practices of Fortune 1000 companies since 1987. In this article, Lawler reviews the management changes that companies have made over time in adopting or adapting four approaches to organizational performance: employee involvement, total quality management, re-engineering, and knowledge management. The article reports the effectiveness of these changes providing information about what makes organizations effective. Lawler ends the article by speculating about high-performance organizations in the future and defining a new view of what constitutes effective organizational design and management.
Lessons
in Leadership and Character
by James A. Wilding
In this article, Jim Wilding, President and CEO of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), explains his views on how an organization can demonstrate leadership and character through its operating principles and practices. He explains how the MWAA made a transition from a department within the federal government to an independent, not-for-profit organization that is now managerially and financially independent. The process implemented during the transition and now in use is a performance management system that required the identification of core management practices, especially decisionmaking, compensating, and goal setting.
The
Evolution of the Elevator Speech
by Steven Hale
This article describes how Steve Hale came to understand and appreciate the power of communicating complex information in a way that gives others a shared base of knowledge. He tells about events that led up to the "elevator speech" as a metaphor for tools that capture and communicate a lot of detail that others can comprehend in only minutes.
There's
a Door Prize at the End of this Presentation (Must Be Present to Win)
by James M. Schultz
The Performance Development group of Walgreens has operated in a low-margin, resource constrained, cost-conscious environment since the early 1970s. From December 31, 1975, to January 1, 2000, $1 invested in Walgreens beat $1 invested in Intel by nearly two times, General Electric by nearly five times, and the general stock market (including the NASDAQ stock run-up at the end of 1999) by more than 15 times.
Coincidence? We think not. It's not magic either. It's the consistent application of strategy and values-but in a Kenny Rogers' "Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold-'em" manner. By sharing a letter to his son, this author takes readers well beyond the specifics of Walgreens environment. We have a chance to generalize the corporate mission/values/ strategy/tactics model and apply it to the basic personal life questions.
Using the Cognitive Approach to Improve Problem-solving
Training
by Kenneth H. Silber, PhD
This previews the Masters Series presentation by discussing what the cognitive approach to instructional design (ID) is and how ID practitioners can design training differently using the approach. The article has two parts. The first part describes why the cognitive approach to ID is important and how the current approach to ID and training development is different from the cognitive approach. It then explains how learning occurs according to the cognitive point of view, and the different categories of learning according to one type of cognitive psychology.
The second part of the article describes a model that synthesizes and summarizes the components of a well-designed lesson and describes what's different about this model from the current approach to ID. This model relates what learners have to do to learn to what instructional designers have to do to help them do so. It presents and briefly explains a general framework for instructional design based on cognitive psychology and exemplifies it with reference to a problem-solving lesson. Finally, it presents a table that one can use as a job aid as one designs training.
More detailed discussion of the issues involved in teaching problem-solving skills, and more specifics of the design of lessons for well and ill-structured problems will be presented in the Masters Series presentation at the 2002 ISPI International Conference.
Managing
a Training Organization-The Challenges of Leading the Way
by Charline Wells
Sandia is a premiere research lab for science, engineering, and nuclear technology. It is a leading technical institution staffed by some of the most educated, best, and brightest scientists in the world. Managers of the Sandia training organization, an "internal business," have the same basic problems to solve as other businesses. We needed to think and act strategically. The "strategic thrusts" for managing our business fall into three broad categories. The article expands on the elements of the three categories that have been implemented by Sandia's corporate training organization. One key lesson: Applying key interventions that you diagnose and implement for others to yourself will improve your performance and sustain your organization well in to the future.
ISPI
info@ispi.org
Would you like to receive more information?