The Road Chosen: Positioning

 

• We will have reached our destination when our customers know who we are and what we do. At that point, we will be positioned. This is also known as branding.

• Positioning will be accomplished when Senior Management knocks on our door to solve the kinds of performance problems we can solve—superbly. We should give some examples here of what we meant by this.

• HPT needs to develop a cube that shows us (practitioners) as specializing in different interventions, markets and levels. See below for more on this.
• We currently have a language of problems, not of tools and processes. We need to change our language to reflect both the positive nature of what we do, as well as the process we follow.
• We need to understand the buying-decision process. Who buys an "intervention" or performance solution system? What do they look for? How do they currently articulate the problem? How could they in the future?
• We need to develop Distance Education, under the ISPI umbrella: To learn what the interventions are, the processes and criteria for use and measurement.
• We need to get to a point where HPT practitioners refer to specialists. This means that the practitioner knows how to analyze the performance situation, and then calls upon the appropriate interventionist to design and implement the intervention(s).

• # of articles published in popular business press in next 12 months (not written by us, but about our successes)
• Cube completed by the conference to show relationships (see below)

HPT needs to develop a cube that shows us (practitioners) as specializing in different interventions, markets and levels.

• Approved HPT language, model and tool completed by 2001
• Certification in place by 2002
• A publicist hired
• New name approved (i.e. PT is the "chemical" name; we need the brand, or popular name for what we do)
• Branding process clarified, developed and implemented
• Mentoring Program by Oct 2000
• HPT is in the Business Schools’ curriculum

• "Quick fix" mentality on the part of most managers
• An HPT solution (to be correct) requires complex thinking process
• Neither our members nor our clients think critically—Do we? And how can we improve the ability of managers and trainers to think critically?
• We need to build the expectation that study is required: journals, PIQ, academic programs
• Our customers are Management: they need a framework for understanding the position of HPT

• Academics provide input ; practitioners synthesize and test and refine and return to academics for more testing and new ideas
• Making products part of our services; we need to be able to have a product that someone can buy, know what it does and why it will work
• Mentoring path to understanding HPT
• Customer Education:
• Selling process
• Cost
• Endow a "Chair for HPT"
• Have front page articles written about successes using HPT appearing in USA Today, LA times, Fortune, Business Week and Fast Company
• Storytelling (increase the knowledge everyone has of performance improvement projects and how they work. Consider interviews and video footage about successful interventions. Think interview with a director of a movie, with footage spliced in)
• Create a searchable database of interventions (Intervention Resource Guide: 50 Performance Improvement Tools is a step in this direction)
• Install a Referral Network (Roger Addison is doing some of this today)
• Make our model-makers recognized industry experts (Don Tosti, Geary Rummler, Roger Addison, Danny Langdon were named) who else? How?
• We must be able to articulate the attributes of each tool: identify the conditions under which each tool would be used.

• Today’s marketplace requires a sophisticated selling process (so we need to develop a selling process and understand how to use it)
• Ability to capture complex thoughts into elegant words and graphics
• Rapid analysis models
• Learn to package our complex solutions as easy, simple steps while hiding the true complexity
• The collective resources of our organization (ISPI)

• Customer’s cynicism regarding the impossibility of changing people’s performance and lack of understanding about the possibility of being systematic in one’s approach to organization and process and people performance
• Value of our solutions: Our value-add for senior managers is to give them an approach to people problems, not a quick fix
• Customers’ pain points and paying points

The Next Steps: Positioning

• Define the body of knowledge
• Define the roles: model-maker, practitioner, professor, ISPI, customers, and show relationship of each to the whole (this would help to show the continuing evolution of our field, and how we are all working together to define and refine it)
• Refine the attributes
• Build a brand
• Hire a publicist
• Standardize the language
• Build the cube: This is a graphic-in-the-making that shows markets in one dimension, levels of work in another and then shows the interventions and those who specialize among them. This would show our relationship relative to OD, TQM, training, and other interventions. We recognize that different ISPI’ers play different roles within the cube.

Langdon, Danny G., Whiteside, K. and McKenna, M. (eds) (1999). Intervention Resource Guide: 50 Performance Improvement Tools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Hale, Judith. (1998). The Performance Consultant’s Fieldbook. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Others

• Resources
• Politics and Turf (this is about certification, but also needs attention so that we are not each competing different sects in a field that no one knows about, but instead are a united force to be contended with while having enormous impact on the world)
• Next generation of model makers and theorists: Where are they?

• Master’s series
• Workshop Presenters
• Academics
• Provide Core Credit through continuing Education in Distance Learning
• Conference Program
• Awards Program
• Individual Awards

• Making all HPT products understandable, accessible and customer-focused
• Spreading the need to position with chapters, members, Board and Advocates

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