November/December, 2000
Volume 39 / Number 10
Page 5
Snake Oil, Science,
and Performance Products
by Jeanne Farrington and Richard E. Clark
Rather than being in the business of creating training or other solutions, human performance technologists should be in the business of improving results. To help individuals, organizations, or societies meet their goals, performance consultants must follow a systematic and systemic process and then select solutions that actually work. Many commonly held assumptions about which solutions work are inaccurate. In other words, many popular solutions do not work, and some even make things worse. Practitioners can avoid embarrassment by examining what research has uncovered regarding a number of popular and intuitively sound practices.
Page 15
Goal
Translation: How to Create a Results-Focused Organizational Culture
by Pierre Mourier
The premise of this article is that in order to improve organizational performance you must change human behavior. Human behavior changes when the following condition is met: expectations of the individual are aligned with the enablers (tools) that the individual has access to, and expectations are further aligned with consequences, in terms of rewards and recognition that are provided by the organization to the individual. Goal translation is a tool to help executives and performance technologists translate corporate vision into meaningful expectations for each individual job performer. The tool allows the organization to create very specific action plans from what can, on occasion, be a very general vision for the organization.
Page 25
First
Steps Fast: Using Technology to Coach Neophytes in Analysis
by Allison Rossett and Christian Volkl
The shift from training to performance involves a radically different way of thinking and acting. To arrive at more strategic and tailored solutions, we rely on analysis to define and implement boundaryless solutions. Unfortunately, conducting analysis isnšt easy, especially for neophytes.
This article describes one approach to teaching students how to do analysis. The focus is on two introductory courses at San Diego State University, one offered on campus and the other via the Internet. The instructional interventions designed for these courses follow a multistrategy approach that includes informational resources, tools, and templates, as well as meaningful opportunities for practice and feedback.
Course evaluations revealed that students benefited the most from class lectures, online support resources, and completion of a small performance analysis project in which they were asked to analyze a problem or opportunity that was of personal or professional importance to them.
Page 31
Four Architectures of Instruction
by Ruth Colvin Clark
Four instructional architectures are described that vary as to the degree of learner control provided, the organizational scheme of the instruction, the presence and nature of the learner interactions, and the emphasis placed on the role of the instruction versus the role of the mental processes of the learner. The article summarizes the four architectures-receptive, behavioral, situated guided discovery, and exploratory-in terms of their basic features and the cognitive impact of each on the learner and describes the type of learners and job tasks that will most benefit from each architecture.
Page 39
Really-How Do Chinese Team?
by Ruhe Hao and Alex Fong
Teamwork is essential to the success and productivity of any organization. Teamwork by definition implies human interaction. However, individuals don't naturally work together as teams. Although teamwork and team performance have been discussed extensively, team building continues to be a source of performance barriers. In addition, when cultural aspects come into the picture, it is difficult for Western managers to address team performance issues adequately. The real challenge is to recognize and differentiate how much of the problem involves human performance issues and how much is culture related. This article provides two native Chinese performance technologists' perspectives on team performance as it relates to Chinese culture.
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