by Sharon Shrock and William Coscarelli

Because of increasing competition, alignment, fluctuating job descriptions, and ever-changing technologies, organizations are increasingly challenged to determine the competence of their members. All performance technologists acknowledge the need for appropriate testing strategies, and non-instructional interventions also frequently require the assessment of human competence whether in the interest of needs assessment, the formation of effective work teams, or as a part of a service or product the organization sells. However, most professional development courses or workshops have typically avoided a complete exploration and resolution of the issues and procedures in testing to concentrate on instructional design or other human performance interventions.

Thus, many instructors, trainers, and performance technologists have had little experience with test development or legal issues and possess few skills with which to address management requests for data verifying what employees can do or defending testing decisions. Simply being able to write good test items will not be adequate in this environment. This lack of knowledge leaves the organization vulnerable to issues of lost opportunity and legal challenges.

If this topic interests you, do not miss Constructing and Critiquing Level Two Evaluation and Certification Systems, offered November 16-17, 2006, in Atlanta, Georgia , and February 22-23, 2007, in Phoenix, Arizona, as part of the Performance Professional Workshop Series offered by ISPI. To register for one or more of these workshops for the advanced professional, click here.

This workshop was developed to help PTers understand the power and process of well-designed criterion-referenced tests. The workshop evolved for a number of reasons:

1. Misleading familiarity.
   Few training professionals now teach the way they were taught in high school. However, they tend to test the way they were tested! Unfortunately for corporate trainers, the best examples of test design they encountered (ACT, SAT) were created to separate test takers, not assess competence for a specific skill. And most teacher-made tests were mongrels that neither separated test takers nor fully assessed competence.
2. Inaccessible technology.
   Criterion-reference testing technology is probably scarce in corporate training, partly because the processes for creating these tests were developed and buried in deeply abstruse measurement journals. Though oddly enough, when you fully understand the process, it is more common sense than statistics.
3. Confusion about the application of Kirkpatrick’s model.
   You cannot do Level 3 and Level 4 evaluations until you have completed Level 2 evaluations. As Kirkpatrick wrote, “Some trainers are anxious to get to Level 3 or 4 right away because they think the first two aren’t important. Don’t do it” (Kirkpatrick, 1994, p. 72). If you do not do Level 2 properly, you cannot make a clear judgment about training’s role on the job or its return on investment because you do not fully understand what was accomplished during training.
4. The single most common error in corporate testing.
   In general, the single most useful improvement you can make in writing test items is to write them above the memorization level. The vast majority of test items we have seen are written at the memorization level. In contrast, the vast majority of jobs require performance that is above the memorization level. This disconnect between testing practice and job performance is what often leads management to question the value of training and turns testing into a misleading indicator of performance (e.g., “How could they pass the course but be unable to do the job?” is a common summary of the problem).
5. Ignorance of the single most useful technique for setting a passing score.
   A criterion-referenced assessment is designed to determine someone’s mastery. The critical issue here is: “How do we determine what the passing score is?” Traditionally, passing scores are set in an arbitrary manner loosely based on what passing was in high school. Professionals can easily use the Angoff Technique to establish a proper and legal cut-off score. It takes very little time to learn and apply this technique, and although it is probably the most widely used technique in certification agencies, few performance technologists seem to have encountered it.

The criterion-referenced design process can be divided in 13 basic steps. These steps are primarily logical analysis rather than technical calculations (for those nasty technical calculations, professional software now exists ubiquitously via web-based systems). The major steps of the process include:

1. Job Task Analysis
2. Establishing the Content Validity of the Analysis
3. Creating the Cognitive Items
4. Creating the Performance Items
5. Establishing the Content Validity for the Items
6. Conducting a Pilot Test of the Test
7. Performing an Item Analysis
8. Creating Item Banks
9. Setting the Cut-Off Score
10. Establishing the Reliability of the Test
11. Establishing the Reliability of the Raters
12. Reporting the Scores
13. Documenting the Process

As it turns out, doing Level 2 assessment properly does not cost much more than doing it improperly. Primarily, it is understanding how to decide which steps must be addressed, which can be truncated or skipped, and knowing why.

References
Kirkpatrick, D. (1994). Evaluating training programs: The four levels. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Shrock, S.A. , & Coscarelli, W.C. (2000). Criterion-referenced test development. Silver Spring, MD : International Society for Performance Improvement.

Bill Coscarelli and Sharon Shrock are Instructional Development faculty at Southern Illinois University. They have served as consultants to universities and businesses regarding testing and evaluation issues and, in a unique university and corporate relationship, helped found and co-direct the Hewlett-Packard World-Wide Test Development Center. Bill and Sharon have provided testing guidance to more than 30 global companies and are beginning their 24^th year as members of ISPI. They may be reached through www.shrockandcoscarelli.com.

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by Carol Haig, CPT, and Roger Addison, CPT, EdD

This month, TrendSpotters takes great pleasure in bringing you ISPI’s own Olympians, Michiel Bloem and Arnoud Vermei of The Netherlands. Arnoud leads WEB Performance, one of Europe’s foremost consulting organizations focused on the interfaces of organizational, process, and human performance and may be reached at info@webperformance.info. Michiel is a longtime consultant specializing in elite sports performance and is an associate of WEB Performance. He may be reached at michiel.bloem@wxs.nl or michiel@bvperformance.nl. They will be Masters’ Series presenters at ISPI’s 2007 International Performance Improvement Conference in San Francisco. Arnoud and Michiel talked with us about their TopSwimmingAmsterdam (TSA) Performance Design Model, this month’s contribution to the TrendSpotters Open Toolkit.

Genesis of This Model
The TSA Performance Design Model is a direct adaptation of Rummler and Brache’s nine performance variables (Rummler & Brache, 1995). As you may know from their conference presentations and their article, The Olympic Road to Performance Improvement, rather than building a model to solve a performance problem, Michiel and Arnoud designed theirs as the foundation for an elite sports organization that they then constructed from the ground up in response to a dream first envisioned over several beers.

Arnoud and Michiel started to dream in 2000: to have Dutch swimmers in the Olympic finals in Athens in 2004. To make this dream a reality, they had to close the gap between the current state of Netherlands “club swimming,” and the desired state of Olympic performance, expressed by their motto, “From 51 to 48 seconds.” They began by focusing on the results they wanted, and from nothing they created an ideal performance organization for Olympic swimming that, ultimately, met and exceeded their dream.

Model Description
They constructed the TSA Performance Design Model with the organizational elements they envisioned to create an elite Netherlands swim team. The model helped them build the TSA organization around the swimmers and included performance at each of the three levels:

• Organizational Level: Ambitious organizational goals and a “winning” design for an elite sports management team to pull all the necessary people and resources together.
• Process Level: Process goals were defined for the key processes (i.e., training, communication, fundraising), and identified process owners took responsibility to monitor and improve the performance of these processes.
• Resource Level: Individual and team performance goals, the integrated Five-I (Integral, International, Interdisciplinary, Innovative, Individual) training program to deliver Olympic results in four years, and athlete performance management.

Most unique in the building of the TSA organization, and in the ultimate success of the athletes, is the “mental” model Arnoud and Michiel used throughout the design, development, and realization of TSA: P = A x S x A or Performance = Ambition x System x Action. Ambition is the desire, the drive to achieve great performance and is a critical component of success in any endeavor. We in human performance technology have historically defined performance as results + activity. It may be that ambition is the factor that separates the average performer from the exemplar. Is this what makes a Lance Armstrong, or anyone at the top of their field, continue to strive and succeed? An insight worthy of more exploration.

How to Use the Model
Although the TSA Performance Design Model is effective in more traditional organizational problem-solving situations, it is a powerful aid for building a performance structure from scratch. Add to the model a healthy dose of ambition, a goal or two that appear far out of reach, some serious drive, a sense of adventure, and a results focus, and your chances of success are excellent. As Michiel and Arnoud remind us, the key is to really believe in your dream and act accordingly: Performance = Ambition x (Rummler’s) System x Action!

Success Story
Ultimately, four of the six TSA athletes qualified for the Athens 2004 Olympics and joined the Dutch swim team. All the swimmers started in their individual events, and three started in the relays, winning Olympic medals. As Beijing 2008 comes closer, we wish them even greater success as they reach for their stretch goal.

Advice to Users of the TSA Performance Design Model
Michiel tells us to keep our dreams in focus. Be wary of over-analyzing. Think results rather than budget because budget thinking creates limits. Set ambitious goals, even when you cannot imagine reaching then. When there is no history, you are free to succeed. As we know, people stretch to meet challenging expectations. If you expect the best performance, you are likely to get it.

Customize the nine performance variables in the model to meet your project’s needs. You will find they enable you to identify the right steps to take and help you build a solid structure for success.

Links to the Performance Technology Landscape
The TSA Performance Design Model supports these principles of Performance Technology:

To review past contributions to the TrendSpotters Open Toolkit, click here.

References
Bloem, M., & Vermei, A. (2005). The Olympic road to performance improvement. Performance Improvement, 44(6), 7-13.

Rummler, G., & Brache, A. (1995). Improving performance: How to manage the white space on the organizational chart. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

If you have an HPT model or tool that supports you in your performance improvement activities, contact Carol Haig, CPT, at carolhaig@earthlink.net or http://home.mindspring.com/%7Ecarolhaig, or Roger Addison, CPT, EdD, at roger@ispi.org.

If your organization has a high-visibility, mission critical training need, you have to be able to guarantee the training will work. Business partners expect nothing less, and rightly so. To ensure learners leave training with the skills they need to perform to management’s expectations their first day back on the job, the instructional modules must follow a true performance-based approach. When performance experts develop a training module, it should contain the following components to guarantee that each learner leaves the training with every skill necessary to meet management’s expectations on the first day after training ends.

A Clearly Stated Performance Objective
The backbone of each module created is a well-defined performance objective. This is the target the learner is aiming for. What is it that the learner needs to be able to do at the end of the module? The key to a good performance objective is that it clearly answers the following questions:

• What should I be able to do after I learn this skill? (Performance)
• How will I know that I am doing it correctly? (Criteria)
• In what situations will I be expected to do this? (Conditions)

Description of Relevance
Or, from a learner’s point of view, “What’s in it for me?” Show the learners why their world will be brighter if they have the skills the module is teaching.

Description of the Skill Check
Explain to the learner, up front, what he or she will be expected to do to demonstrate the required performance. There is no guessing what will or will not be included on the “test.” The goal is to have every learner be successful. When the learners know what they’ll be tested on, they can focus on practicing the required performance rather than waste effort trying to guess if what they’re learning is important.

Content
Limit the content to the information learners need before they’re ready to practice. The content is lean, because only what’s needed to close the gap between what the learners already know and what they must know before they can practice new skills is included.

Practice and Feedback
Opportunities for job-related practice represent the bulk of the module. In a performance-based module, 50% or more of the module is dedicated to practice and feedback so that the learner is prepared to face the situations they are most likely to face on the job. Through practice and immediate feedback, learners gain self-efficacy, the belief that they’re capable of performing a given task or applying a particular skill. Without self-efficacy, learners may have the skill, but they may lack the confidence to use it.

Demonstration of Competence
The skill check is a performance test that assesses the learner’s ability to do exactly what is called for in the performance objective to the criteria that has been set. The skill check is a Level 2 evaluation that should be built into every instructional module developed.

Note: Reprinted with permission of CEP, The Center for Effective Performance. For more information, contact Linde Miscio at lmiscio@cepworldwide.com.

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Sitting here in my office, I have come to see my computer screen as a window to the world—and even to our Society. Just this morning I called someone in Berlin (I live in California). Before I dialed, I looked at my dashboard widget clocks, and saw that it would be 5:30 p.m. her time. I looked up her number in the ISPI online directory. It was her work number; maybe she would still be in the office.

Here in the States, we have to dial lots of numbers to call overseas. I typed “country code Germany” into my built-in search bar to find out if I had all the numbers I needed. I did. I remembered the “011” that lets the phone company know we’re calling outside the United States, and I dialed away. After a brief pause I heard the loudest ring tones, a foreign sound, which let me know that I’d gotten through, and then we were connected (via her work phone forwarded to her cell phone, but that’s another story).

After obtaining the desired result from the phone call, and exchanging goodbyes (“Have a nice evening./Have a nice day.”), I sent an instant message via Skype to another ISPI friend in Zurich, letting her know that the mission was accomplished. She typed back, “I’m so happy. She is wonderful, yes. You’re amazing too. You actually know how to call outside the U.S.? I wish some more Americans had this skill!”

I typed, “LOL...dialing the phone is not really that difficult.” But then, you know, it did take a few extra steps, which might stop a person from making the effort. And then, there’s planning ahead for the time zones.

It is much easier if we use a tool like Skype, which has the advantage of being free to both parties, and gives us the ability to point and click and be connected. Sometimes, late at night or in the morning, I hear the distinctive Skype ring tone. My ISPI friend from Bonn is calling, having arrived early or stayed late at her office. We catch up on committee things, and girlfriend talk if there is time. It is like she is just around the corner.

Because of these phone calls, instant messages, looking things up on the web, and receiving and replying to some number of Society-related email messages this morning, I kept thinking about affordances. According to Wikipedia, “An affordance is a property of an object, or a feature of the immediate environment, that indicates how to interface with that object or feature. The empty space within an open doorway, for instance, affords movement across that threshold. A couch affords the possibility of sitting down on it.”

Donald Norman writes that an affordance one does not perceive is basically useless. It is the perceived affordance that we can use to enhance our performance. We have these great resources for international communication sitting right on our desks. In addition to the wonderful experiences we have meeting each other face-to-face at conferences and other live events, we can make our Society a lot “flatter” if we recognize and take advantage of the affordances our computers and other technologies offer to increase our interpersonal exchanges.

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by Jodi Crawford, 2007 Conference Committee

Of course, the best thing about attending ISPI’s Annual Conference is the opportunity to learn best practices in the educational sessions, meet and speak with leaders in the field, and network with performance improvement professionals from around the world. Getting to explore a great city is just icing on the cake.

If you are debating whether or not to attend the 2007 International Performance Improvement Conference in San Francisco, April 30-May 3, consider how you can spend your time before and after conference activities. This city truly has something to interest everyone. The conference hotel is within walking distance of many places and is close to public transportation.

• The Museum of Modern Art is right next to the hotel.
• The Asian Art Museum is located in Golden Gate Park and contains art from throughout Asia.
• California Palace of the Legion of Honor contains art covering 4,000 years of European history.
• The Palace of Fine Arts is an architectural treat.
• Union Square, with its upscale stores, is a few blocks from the hotel.
• Ghirardelli Square has specialty shops in addition to the famous chocolate. The most interesting way to get there from the hotel is to walk a few blocks to the streetcar and ride it to Pier 39.
• Fisherman’s Wharf (Pier 39) has many specialty shops, lots of restaurants, and wild sea lions dozing in the sunshine.
• Chinatown has interesting shopping, restaurants, and open-air markets. A walk through here can make you forget that you are in the United States. The main entrance gate is just a few blocks from the hotel.
• The “Rock”—Take the ferry from Pier 39 to Alcatraz Island and walk the corridors that imprisoned such infamous criminals as Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly. The views of the city and the bay are pretty spectacular too.
• Mission Dolores is the oldest building in San Francisco, complete with hand-carved altars, adobe walls, and original tile work and timbers.
• The “Painted Ladies” are San Francisco’s wonderful Victorian-era houses, which are perched on the hillsides.
• The Haight-Ashbury area is a must see. It was the center of the hippie culture of the 1960s and is still home to funky shops and inexpensive cafes.
• Wander in the footsteps of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and visit the City Lights Bookseller. One of a dying breed, a non-chain bookstore, it was co-founded by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who is still an owner.
• If you can add extra days onto your trip, you can head north of the city to the Napa Valley. This region has an endless supply of wineries, charming inns, great dining, and truly breathtaking scenery.

This is just a small sample of what San Francisco has to offer, so come to ISPI 2007! Ride the cable cars halfway to the stars, and be sure to bring your walking shoes. Wearing flowers in your hair is strictly optional.

by William R. Daniels

Culture is a matter of social survival. It is all about relationships. Each member of the human species is born into a state of dependency upon other human beings. The community bears the burden of our infant dependency because it foresees our potential to become a contributing member to its own survival. Since the dawn of time, the human community, through culture, has been experimenting, more or less consciously, with the processes to develop this potential.

Many millenniums later, culture at least deserves some credit for having made the human species more plentiful, more globally embedded, and more massive in organizational scale than ever. But understanding culture requires much more attention. Neighbors, who once dwelled next door, now live far away—strangers who quarrel with ballistic missiles. Unless we can better understand its complex methods of social control, we have reason to fear the consequences of cultural failure and inter-cultural conflict.

So, we Human Performance Technologists gather in Prague, October 12-14, for ISPI Europe’s 5^th Annual Conference to confront the somewhat mysterious dynamics of culture. We bring our systemic approach to human learning and look beyond it to the social systems within which humans attempt to apply their learning. We are challenged to get organizational cultures more adaptable than ever before.

The systemic approach to cultural change is still in its infancy. But this much we do know: Most organizational change efforts die in less than 30 months. Sometimes they are merely dismissed as costly fads, but often, they actually destroy the organization. Organizational cultures have very real abilities to resist change, and they often fight change to the death.

One of its most primitive but still prevalent systems for resistance to change is the informal structure of role-sets that underlies all cultures. A role-set is a small group of people within the organization who see themselves as dependent upon an individual called the “focal-person.” Members of a role-set often do not know each other. But they all compete for the focal-person’s attention and service. Usually, no member of the role-set gets fully satisfied. So the typical way in which the role-set members communicate with the focal-person is through complaints accompanied by threats and actual disturbances of the focal-person’s comfort and well-being. (One such form of complaint and punishment is to send the focal-person to training.)

By trial and error, the focal-person discovers a pattern of behavior that keeps the role-set’s punishment at the lowest level possible. This pattern, over time, becomes very stable and predictable. The members of the role-set, though not truly satisfied, settle for what they can get. But each member stays on the alert to fight any change in the focal person’s performance that might diminish his or her share of attention and service. The focal-person, knowing that “change means pain,” remains stable and predictable in spite of all the formal organization’s efforts at change.

I have been wrestling with this sort of cultural resistance to change for 30 years. I come to the ISPI European conference to share some of the methods my colleagues and I have discovered for bringing the organization’s formal and informal systems of cultural maintenance into alignment for change.

William (Bill) R. Daniels, CEO of American Consulting & Training, Inc., has been working since 1973 with organizations in numerous industries to improve managerial performance and organizational productivity. His work has focused on the causal relationship between managerial behavior and organizational results. He is passionate about finding a way to fully use human assets in organizations. Bill believes that it is extremely important to rely on group work and to listen, listen, listen to each other. He enjoys being a member of ISPI and serving as a past member of the Board of Directors for the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance, and Instruction (IBSTPI). Bill may be reached at actbd@aol.com.

As a scholarly forum for the Human Performance Technology (HPT) field, Performance Improvement Quarterly, under the guidance of co-editors Karen Medsker and Michael Cassidy, seeks to integrate and expand the methods, processes, and findings across multiple disciplines as they relate to solving problems and realizing opportunities in human performance. HPT work focuses on valued, measured results; considers the larger system context of people’s performance; and provides valid and reliable measures of effectiveness. The quarterly values both methodological rigor and variety, and publishes scholarship related to:

• Process improvement
• Organizational design & alignment
• Analysis, evaluation, & measurement
• Performance management
• Instructional systems
• Management of organizational performance
• Motivation, incentives, & feedback

Experience what Performance Improvement Quarterly has to offer. Become a new subscriber and, while supplies last, receive a complimentary copy of the newly-released Special Issue focused on New Frameworks for HPT Scholarship guest edited by Thomas Schwen. If you are interested in starting your subscription, please send an email with your phone number to pubs@ispi.org and a staff member will contact you.

by Richard F. Gerson, CPT, PhD

Many years ago, the Wall Street Journal released a quote that said 80% of the articles published in that day’s edition were the result of press releases sent by companies. If we accept this fact as true for purposes of this article, the statement attests to the power of public relations and publicity. If a major business newspaper sees value in printing the information provided by various companies about themselves, what would prevent performance consultants from using these same techniques to generate media coverage for their own businesses?

Public relations is the art and science of getting free media coverage for the work you do. Although this is an unscientific definition of the term, it is practical and accurate. Your goal is to get newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television stations, the Internet, search engines, and anyone else who has communication access to an audience to carry your message. Here are three things you can do to build up your public relations efforts and grow your HPT practice.

Press Release Schedule
Get yourself on a monthly schedule to send press releases to your local, regional, and even national media. You must first develop a media contact list of names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of reporters, editors, newscasters, show hosts, program producers, and news directors. Then, when you have something worthwhile to talk about, send them a press release (you can go online to see various formats for press releases). Some things that you can cover in your press releases include acquiring a certification such as the Certified Performance Technologist designation, having an article published in a magazine or journal such as Performance Improvement or Performance Improvement Quarterly, acquiring a new client, hiring someone in your company, promoting someone in your company, becoming a member of a charity board or committee, receiving an award or honorary degree, having a book published, and the list goes on. Basically, the media is interested in what you have accomplished, what you have helped people accomplish, and anything else that is human interest.

Media Resource
This is one of the most powerful and least used public relations techniques. When you become a media resource, the media contacts you because of your expertise. They want to interview you, quote you, and raise you up as the area or industry expert on a particular subject. The way you become a media resource is to publish, give speeches, and inform the media about your accomplishments by calling them or emailing them. It is not bragging because they are looking for credible experts to serve as resources or guests on their shows. Another way to become a media resource is to write to a reporter or newscaster after he or she has presented a story and express your opinion of the story. Then, tell the reporter or newscaster about your background and credentials and that you will be available whenever a professional or expert in your field is required. For example, I live in the Tampa Bay area in Florida, and I am contacted regularly by newscasters, show hosts, producers, and reporters for my opinions on local athletes and sports teams (my PhD is in sports psychology), business and organizational issues (my consulting practice), and how to improve individual performance (my coaching practice).

Sponsorship or Volunteer
Community service is an excellent way to generate positive public relations. I strongly recommend you consider sponsoring a youth sports team or an after-school program. Get involved with local charities and be an active participant in their committees. In fact, I know of one consultant who built her entire practice by serving on charity committees and having other committee members ask her what she did. When she told them, they hired her because they felt comfortable having worked with her on the committees. Your willingness and ability to sponsor and volunteer will generate a great deal of positive publicity for you and your company. The only thing you have to be aware of is that these two approaches can take some time to pay off. Yet, they are worth it.

There are many more approaches to public relations that will help you grow your performance consulting practice. I strongly recommend you start with these three. Then, find two or three other approaches you might want to use and rotate through all of them. The more the media and the public see your name, the more credibility you will build. Then, your “brand” will become better known and people will start to refer clients to you. There have been numerous times I acquired new clients because someone else saw me on television or read about me in the newspaper and told this person to contact me. Public relations is very powerful and must be included on a regular basis in all your marketing efforts.

Note: If you would like more information about ISPI’s Marketing Communications Committee, please contact Ken Steinman at ksteinman@comcast.net.

Richard Gerson is President of Gerson Goodson, Inc., a performance consulting and coaching firm that helps clients align their people, performance, and results to be more effective in accomplishing their objectives. Dr. Gerson is the author of 21 books and over 400 articles. He may be reached at richard.gerson@richgerson.com.

When was the last time you engaged in a learning event that had no clear performance objectives? When was the last time you participated in a meeting for which no measurable results had to be achieved? When was the last time you did something for your own personal development other than reading a book or attending an ISPI conference?

On the last weekend in July, a group of European HPT practitioners came together in Zürich, Switzerland, for a different kind of meeting. We got to know each other over the course of the past several years when we helped establish what today is known as ISPI Europe. Together we organized conferences, published articles, and contributed in various other ways to the development of our professional society.

This time, however, our purpose was not to prepare the next conference or do similar work. This time, we came together simply for the fun of sharing experiences and exchanging ideas. We had no clear agenda for our “meeting,” except that we planned for ample opportunities to enjoy good food, great conversations, and long walks around Lake Zürich.

We listened to each other’s stories about recent projects, implementation challenges, successes, new ideas, and plans. We probed issues and questioned each other to dig deep into the heart of the matter and to sharpen our understanding of our profession. We provided each other with feedback and recommendations for trying alternative approaches. In other words, we learned from each other and benefited from this community of practice.

In our profession, we often have to operate on our own, even if we are part of large projects with many team members. There is a certain element of loneliness to our jobs. We always focus on outcomes and results, and we typically work toward tight deadlines that do not allow for tinkering and trying out alternative approaches before the best solution emerges. We have to deliver quickly and to the highest standards.

Thus, we seldom get a chance to lean back for a moment, take a deep breath, and reflect upon our daily work and how we could do things differently and maybe better. Instead, we often feel trapped on a treadmill.

This meeting in Zürich was a successful attempt to leave this vicious circle for a moment and to gain new insights into our own work. I highly recommend that everyone in our Society make time for similar experiences, as it does not take much effort. For example:

• Invite a group of trusted colleagues with whom you share a mutual understanding of our profession and an interest in further developing your skills and knowledge.
• Pick a location that allows for concentrated discussions and reflective thinking, a place that is quiet and leaves you and your group undisturbed, and maybe even offers additional perks such as a wonderful panorama to let your thoughts flow.
• Prepare for a relaxing atmosphere in which you can go back and forth seamlessly between discussions, food, and stimulating activities, such as going for a walk.
• Keep a flipchart in the back if somebody feels like drawing, but stay away from PowerPoint and other types of “formal presentation overkill”—believe in the value of pure storytelling!
• Do not be afraid of the lack of structure, and let the topics for discussion emerge during your meeting. Go with the flow to fully enjoy the creative atmosphere of the different perspectives within your group.

During this one and a half day sharing session, I learned a lot about all kinds of topics such as coaching, cultural differences, reorganization, HPT models, and many more things. I certainly learned more than in the many formal training sessions I have attended in the past. And, I definitely came to appreciate, again, the wealth and richness that is achieved through the interaction of our Society’s members when they all bring their unique perspective to the table.

To say it with the words of a leading credit card company: The sharing of ideas and experiences is priceless. For everything else, there is ISPI!

Christian Voelkl, CPT, is a Past President of ISPI Europe and helped organize their last four conferences. He is a Management Consultant with E& E information consultants AG, a Berlin based business consultancy for strategic performance and risk management. At E& E, Chris is responsible for advisory services in their Practice for Performance Centered Technologies and has led multiple projects to support the rollout of SAP and other IT applications. He holds a Diplom Ingenieur degree in Media Technology from the Hochschule für Medien in Stuttgart, and a Masters in Educational Technology from San Diego State University. Chris may be reached at Christian.Voelkl@ee-consultants.de.

ISPI’s Instructional Systems for Results Fall Symposium and the Results-Focused Organization: Pathways to Excellence Fall Symposium will run concurrently, September 14-16, 2006, at the Buena Vista Palace Hotel (on the Walt Disney Resort) in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. You may attend one Symposium or mix and match the educational sessions best suited for your professional advancement.

Join ISPI and your colleagues as we spotlight the latest solutions to effectively improve workplace performance. Interact with industry experts and thought leaders as they share current trends and applications in the field to help you and your organization achieve maximum success.

Instructional Systems for Results Fall Symposium
This event focuses on determining when learning should occur and the best way to achieve it. You can discover for yourself, in a hands-on environment, the latest thinking and application of ISD presented by experts in the field. The keynote presentation, Next Generation e-Learning: Making Sense of What’s New, What’s Hot, What Works, and Why, will be given by Lance Dublin, Founder and Principal of Dublin Consulting.

Educational Sessions by Experts in the Field
Presentations include:

• Designing Instructional Strategies: A Cognitive Perspective
  Kenneth H. Silber, CPT, PhD
• Engaging All Four Generations Through Targeted Communication Techniques
  Giselle Kovary, MA
• Establishing, Managing, and Maintaining Client-Consultant and Client-Vendor Relationships
  Ken McClung, CPT, EdD
• Five Steps to Blended Bliss: A Decision-Making Process for Designing Blended Learning Solutions
  Kate Wartchow, PhD, and Rebecca Britt, MS
• ISD Toolkit: Sticking to the Essentials with Exemplars
  Richard Pearlstein, PhD
• Modeling Mastery Performance and Systematically Deriving the Enablers
  Guy W. Wallace, CPT
• Outsourcing: An ISD Management Strategy?
  Judith Hale, CPT, PhD
• Using Mobile Technologies for Rapid Instructional Design, Development, and Delivery
  Diane Gayeski, PhD, and Michael Petrillose, PhD

Results-Focused Organization: Pathways to Excellence Fall Symposium
In a global economy, performance counts, rapid change is inevitable, and in the long run only those organizations that are agile will survive. This program focuses on the latest thinking and applications for organizational management and culture change. Enhance your skills under the guidance of the best in the business. The keynote presentation, Linking Individual Performance to Organization Results, will be given by Geary Rummler, CPT, PhD, Partner, Performance Design Lab.

Educational Sessions by Experts in the Field
Presentations include:

• Blueprints for Organizational Transformation: Creating MEGA Change When You Can’t Call for a “Time Out”
  Mary Norris Thomas, CPT, PhD
• Designing the Process-Centered Organization
  Alan Ramias and Ray A. Svenson, CPT
• How to Make a Performance Improvement Based HRD and Training Department Come True
  Klaus D. Wittkuhn, CPT, and Geary A. Rummler, CPT, PhD
• Leveraging Human Capital through Strategic Human Performance Systems
  Brian Desautels, CPT, and Jane Brenneman, SPHR
• Organizational Alignment: A Nine-Step Method for Maximizing Organizational Performance
  J. Robert (Bob) Carleton and Alan Stevens
• Organizational Performance
  Donald T. Tosti, CPT, PhD
• Organizational Rot and Social Stagnation: Let’s Stop Nibbling at Human Performance Improvement
  Bill Daniels, Timm Esque, CPT, and Kevin Gazzara, DM
• Task Quotient: Breaking the Performance Barrier
  Kevin Gazzara, DM, and Hollie Martin, DDS, PhD

There is still time to register. For more information, visit www.ispi.org.

To fly, perhaps dream,
Of safe journeys, now quite dry,
Where eagles dare surf.

Recent events have changed the travel restrictions for air travel carry—on luggage, restricting liquids, and certain foods. You can view a current list of Permitted and Prohibited Items from the U.S. Transportation Safety Administration. As an international society, the relationship between transportation, safety, and food can definitely affect performance. One group that focuses on this link is the National Business Travel Association, who notes that “(f)or most companies, travel is the second largest controllable expense.” Their site provides links on upcoming conferences, jobs, and research, including a .PDF white paper on Building a Strategic Meetings Management Program. To prepare, this month we also celebrate National Food Safety Education Month. “Don’t Compromise—Clean and Sanitize” with downloadable posters, training activities, and promotional materials, provided by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, to ensure retailers, government agencies, and others involved with food handling and preparation maintain safety. For the record, September is also National Rice Month and National Honey Month. Get on board with improving government human resource management and travel to Government Workforce: Poised for Takeoff (Sept. 20-22, 2006) a Government HR Innovations conference in Arlington, VA, “the only national HR event that brings federal, state & local HR managers together.” If you’d rather enjoy your airplanes with a beverage and your comfortable chair next to your keyboard, check out the Airplane of the Month, from the Young Eagles program of the Experimental Aircraft Association, “the world’s leading recreational aviation organization, with 170,000 members and 1,000 local Chapters.”

Any listing is for informational purposes only and does not indicate an endorsement either by ISPI or myself. I hope you find these resources useful, and your feedback is greatly appreciated.

When he is not Internet trawling for ISPI, Todd Packer can be found improving business, non-profit, government, and individual performance through research, training, and innovation coaching as principal consultant of Todd Packer and Associates, LLC, based in Ohio . For sample articles on performance innovation and additional information, please visit www.toddpacker.com. Todd may be reached at tp@toddpacker.com.

ISPI is an organization of creative, innovative, and hard-working members, who often complete impressive projects that are seldom recognized for their excellence! Recently, ISPI Awards of Excellence criteria and application were streamlined so they align with the familiar Standards of Performance Technology.

Now, CPTers can consider completing the Awards of Excellence application for the projects submitted in their CPT application. In fact, any time a project is completed with outstanding results, that added value, used systemic and systematic approaches, and was based on collaboration and partnership, the project is a potential for an Award of Excellence. Read through the criteria, application process, and judging criteria to determine if your project represents the high standards of excellence and “place your hat in the ring.”

ISPI’s Board of Directors would like to thank Eileen Banchoff, Ed Schneider, and their committee for their thoughtful and careful effort to align the Awards of Excellence criteria to the Standards of Performance Technology. Since the standards are key to ISPI’s professional practice, this alignment strengthens ISPI members and conveys unity throughout the profession.

To learn more about the newly-aligned Awards of Excellence criteria, click here. The deadline for award submissions is October 20, 2006.

Are you working to improve workplace performance? Then ISPI membership is your key to professional development through education, certification, networking, and professional affinity programs.

If you are already a member, we thank you for your support. If you have been considering membership or are about to renew, there is no better time to join ISPI. To apply for membership or renew, visit www.ispi.org, or simply click here.

ISPI is looking for Human Performance Technology (HPT) articles (approximately 500 words and not previously published) for PerformanceXpress that bridge the gap from research to practice (please, no product or service promotion is permitted). Below are a few examples of the article formats that can be used:

• Short “I wish I had thought of that” Articles
• Practical Application Articles
• The Application of HPT
• Success Stories

In addition to the article, please include a short bio (2-3 lines) and a contact e-mail address. All submissions should be sent to april@ispi.org. Each article will be reviewed by one of ISPI’s on-staff HPT experts, and the author will be contacted if it is accepted for publication. If you have any further questions, please contact april@ispi.org.

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Feel free to forward ISPI’s PerformanceXpress newsletter to your colleagues or anyone you think may benefit from the information. If you are reading someone else’s PerformanceXpress, send your complete contact information to april@ispi.org, and you will be added to the PerformanceXpress emailing list.

PerformanceXpress is an ISPI member benefit designed to build community, stimulate discussion, and keep you informed of the Society’s activities and events. This newsletter is published monthly and will be emailed to you at the beginning of each month.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact April Davis, ISPI’s Associate Executive Director, at april@ispi.org.

ISPI Executive
1400 Spring Street, Suite 260
Silver Spring, MD 20910 USA
Phone: 301.587.8570
Fax: 301.587.8573
info@ispi.org
http://www.ispi.org