I want to change the subject here. Robert was responding in the Employee
Ranking thread but his comments tie to some basics about performance
management and that's the path I want to go down at this point.
At one point, Robert writes:
>The practical difficulty is that we simply don't know when bad performance
>is a result of a person who is hopeless, an interaction between
>environment and person that is toxic, or an environmental/system problem.
I would modify that to say that our ignorance of the matter is a starting
condition, not a continuing state. There are methods and techniques for
isolating the factors contributing to performance problems. What is so
very, very interesting about the matter is that rarely is the person found
to be the primary factor. Two sources have cited essentially the same
number: Deming, and Geary Rummler, of Rummler Brache. Both believe the
individual lies at the heart of the matter roughly 10% of the time; the
rest of the time, it's the system or some aspect of the individual's work
environment (e.g., lack of tools, communications breakdowns, no feedback,
wrong incentives, etc.).
Robert also writes:
>Key point of convergence. TQM, Deming and LO folks seem to have come to
>the realization that performance doesn't occur in a vacuum. It makes
>business sense for organizations to look to themselves, not to blame, but
>to identify factors that might be contributing to performance failure.
There is an entire body of knowledge devoted to identifying and analyzing
performance failures in an organizational setting. It is known generally
as "human performance technology" and it is most concentrated in a group
known as the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI).
That organization started out life as the National Society for Programmed
Instruction (NSPI) and later became the National Society for Performance
and Instruction. What its members call "human performance technology"
came into being largely because people were trying to find out why
training results that were so clearly achieved in a training setting
failed to transfer to the workplace. What they found, of course, were
factors such as lack of feedback, the wrong tools for the job at hand, an
environment not conducive to the task, absence of feedback, conflicting
incentives and so on. Those "people" I mention bear names like Karen
Brethower, Tom Gilbert, Joe Harless, Robert Mager and Geary Rummler, and
they are all well-known and highly respected figures in their field.
Tom Gilbert, I am sad to say, is no longer with us, however, he left
behind a wonderful book of special relevance to many discussions on this
list. Its title is "Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance."
If you haven't read it, I believe you will find it well worth the time and
money.
Later on, Robert writes:
>I think we are caught between and betwixt cultures. Performance management
>and the philosophy underlying it are of the "old" school of thought, from
>perhaps a simpler time. We could count the widgets made and be satisfied
>determining performance that way.
>
>The "new" sense is that performance is multi-determined by person and
>environment, by systems and people, by inter-relationships. But the OLD
>way is what most of us have worked under, and is embedded deep in our
>culture beyond the workplace.
Current human performance technology certainly has its roots in a time
when much work was manual and the basic management prescription centered
on compliance with work routines that had been defined by people other
than those who were charged with carrying them out. In a word, the task
of management once centered primarily on engineering work routines and
then ensuring compliance with these routines. Widgets produced was a good
measure of performance -- of task, of individual, of process, and of
organization. Things aren't that simple anymore.
In any event, Robert's posting reminded me that I have not seen (or at
least do not recall seeing) anything on this list having to do with what
is known elsewhere as "human performance technology." It is, however,
extremely relevant to the discussions of performance, appraisals, employee
rankings, and much else of interest to members of this list.
Thanks for the reminder, Robert...
Regards,
Fred Nickols
The Distance Consulting Company
nickols@worldnet.att.net
http://home.att.net/~nickols/distance.htm
--Fred Nickols <nickols@worldnet.att.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>