PerformanceXpress

ISPI Encore and Workshop Presenter Cal Wick Discusses the Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning

Seven years ago, a client asked me to do some follow-up interviews with participants in one of its flagship programs. What I discovered was discouraging: Although the program received excellent end-of-class evaluations, only one person in six could give a specific example of how he or she had used what was learned to improve performance.

I realized that such a low transfer rate greatly reduced the value that the training and development initiative could have delivered. I decided to dedicate my energies to finding ways to accelerate learning transfer and application.

We have had the opportunity over the past six years to work with a large number of companies that do an outstanding job of putting learning to work. What we discovered was that the most effective learning organizations practiced six key disciplines:

These six disciplines form a chain of value that is only as strong as its weakest link. The 6Ds™ have proven to be a valuable mnemonic for reviewing programs and identifying opportunities to strengthen even already strong initiatives.

Note: This article is taken from Learning Alert sponsored by the Fort Hill Company, www.forthillcompany.com.

TrendSpotters 2006
This Was the Year That Was
by Carol Haig, CPT, and Roger Addison, CPT, EdD

In January, TrendSpotters embarked on an adventure of discovery in which we searched for useful models and tools from colleagues who were willing to share. The year’s search was fruitful, and we brought our readers a valuable collection of performance improvement aids.

Each contributor shared the genesis of a model or tool and made it accessible with clear instructions for use, helpful visuals, and hints for getting started. Success stories added both inspiration and information, reducing the intimidation factor for first-time users.

At TrendSpotters Central, we had a great time talking with colleagues and learning new uses for familiar models and tools as well as making the acquaintance of new ones.

We are pleased to report that every model and tool we featured supports the four Principles of Performance Technology:

In this season of giving thanks, we applaud our fine contributors for demonstrating one of the hallmarks of ISPI: the gracious sharing of knowledge to further the professional growth of colleagues and enhance the success of HPT.

To our readers and contributors, as we say in California:
Thank you for sharing. And happy holidays!

For nearly two decades, I have been teaching performance improvement professionals about the importance—I would even say the necessity—of building fluent performance in coaching and training programs, if they want people who complete their programs to use what they learn. I have spoken with tens of thousands of people around the world about this topic on a kind of professional mission that started while I was a graduate student at Harvard and involved in research, curriculum design, and teacher training focused on development of fluent behavior. My February ProSeries workshop in Phoenix, Building Fluent Performance for Results, is devoted to this topic. One of the beauties of the word fluency is that it is intuitively understandable by most people. Nevertheless, let me tell you a bit more from a technical perspective why, if we really care about performance improvement, fluent behavior is the only kind that matters.

First a definition: Fluency is that combination of accuracy plus speed (or performance quality plus pace) that characterizes competent performance. In a world grown up with percentage correct as the default measure of attainment in school education and adult training programs, this definition can be a little jarring—in a good way. It shakes us out of what I call the “percent correct box.” If we observe anyone considered to be truly competent in practically any area of skill or knowledge, we will see that what truly separates that person from only partly skilled or incompetent people is not merely the accuracy or quality of their performance; rather, it is the time dimension—the quickness, smoothness, rhythm, or lack of hesitation in how he or she behaves. To detect, and provide feedback about the attainment of that temporal characteristic of competence, we need to pay attention to it—either by timing performance and comparing it during the development process to known time-based standards for performing exactly the same activity or by looking carefully to see if the performer is behaving with what I call “normal confident pace” in skills such as supervision, dancing, or talking about a topic.

This is completely obvious in such domains as athletics, dance, music, or martial arts, but not so obvious in intellectual, verbal, or interpersonal skill areas. That is why my workshops, articles, and presentations are always sprinkled with quotations and examples from such performers as Ray Charles, Michael Jordan, Bill Clinton, or Bruce Lee. These are people whose competence is obvious and in whom the smoothness or pace of their behavior is a distinguishing characteristic. And they are people who have achieved this fluency through practice.

What we learned in our early research, and have been demonstrating in thousands of cases with children (in a field called Precision Teaching founded by Dr. Ogden Lindsley, a recipient of ISPI’s highest award for professional achievement), and in my own work with adults, is that attaining fluent performance is associated with key results that we seek in our training and coaching programs. People who achieve fluency are able to remember or retain what they learn, perform with endurance over extended periods even in the presence of distracting events, and, perhaps most important, flexibly apply fluent skills and knowledge as they combine them with other behavior in real-world situations. In contrast, people who have achieved only accurate but hesitant or “shaky” levels of performance tend to quickly forget what they have learned, in part because they are neither competent nor confident enough to use their new behavior to produce the natural positive consequences that come from capable performance.

In the end, if our training and coaching programs do not enable participants to achieve fluency, we have probably wasted a lot of time and money on those programs. At a minimum, the results are hit-or-miss, depending on whether each individual is persistent or motivated enough to continue using what he or she has learned to “practice on the job” and, thereby, eventually achieve fluency without our help.

These findings, and the analysis, design, and instructional methodologies we have developed over the years called the FluencyBuilding Technology, have allowed my clients and me to achieve such results as reflected in my article with Lee Sweeney reporting our work in a call center. We were able to cut training time by one-third and enable newly hired call center representatives to outperform their tenured peers by 60% within two weeks of completing our new hire training program.

If you want to learn more, sign up for my two-day ProSeries workshop Building Fluent Performance for Results, or contact me directly (see below).

Order today and save! The holiday season is just around the corner. Make sure everyone on your list receives the latest books in the field of performance improvement. For a limited time, professionals in the field (non-members) receive the 15% ISPI member discount on every purchase! When checking out, enter code: AFF15. Click here to browse our new online bookstore. This discount is good on all Wiley books purchased through the ISPI bookstore, so you can even shop for those not in the field.

From the Board
Perfromance Beyond Borders: A Worldwide Perspective
by Miki Lane, CPT, ISPI Director

In my last PerformanceXpress article on performance beyond borders, I talked about the need for performance improvement in United States and Canadian border crossings. This month I would like to expand this to a worldwide perspective.

I recently had the opportunity to do some work for a client in both Europe and Africa. I was there to do training for the aviation industry in topics like Training Needs Assessment, Instructional Design, and Instructional Techniques. The participants were from all over the world, except North America. In one class, I had students from Russia, Nigeria, Sudan, Kenya, Columbia, Spain, Switzerland, Croatia, Mauritius, Czech Republic, Brunei, China, and Romania. The group was diverse with an equal mix of male and female, from the ages of 20 to 60, with varying competence in English (the courses are offered in English, which is the official language of the aviation industry). In addition, experience crossed over many industries and governments, and they were the products of a variety of educational systems.

The similarities shared were that they were currently in the same industry, they had specific problems or issues (pre-identified as training needs or issues) in their workplaces, and they, for the most part, chose to be in the training session.

As you can imagine, my expectations were mixed, and I was wondering how I would deal with the diversity and still achieve the objectives of the course. All of the courses are instructor led, and the activities are performed on an individual basis, in pairs, or in groups. They had major assignments in each of the courses and were graded according to specified criteria.

I had three surprises. First, I found the students highly motivated, which makes many of the diversity issues disappear. Harold Stolovitch talks about the three factors required for learning being ability, prior knowledge, and motivation. So, while the learners had varying abilities and prior knowledge, their high motivation set the stage for learning.

The second surprise, which probably ties into the motivation issue, was their strong work ethic. They came to class on time, returned from breaks on time, and worked hard on their projects. It was refreshing to see this after some of my recent North American training experiences.

Far and away, however, the biggest surprise was their reaction to the concept of performance in the workplace and the relationship of performance to training. Universally, when they or their organizations were faced with performance problems, they looked to training to solve those problems. The lack of performance was always a worker issue and was best solved by training or re-training the employee. This was why they were attending these courses, to do a better job of analyzing training needs and designing and delivering instruction to most effectively and efficiently meet those needs.

When we started discussing how to improve performance by looking at non-training causes and potential solutions, they had a cognitive disconnect that was remarkable to witness. They all seemed to feel the performance problems that were evident in their organizations resided elsewhere than in the worker, but they had no way of getting others to recognize it or any methodology for identifying where the problems resided.

Once we discussed gap analysis, Gilbert’s six box model, and cause analysis, they started to look at non-training issues in their organizations. Now, admittedly, I did go beyond the scope of the existing course, but the end result more than justified the change. The assignments they produced (both analyses and design documents), focused on performance issues, not just what training solution was going to be implemented.

So, what does this mean for ISPI and performance beyond borders? Well, the world is a big place and as long as we have been telling the performance story, it still needs to be told again and again. There is a tremendous market for the information, methodologies, and technologies we take for granted. Many organizations worldwide could and should benefit from HPT, and we have to get the story out.

There will be some new ISPI members that come out of these courses and slowly the word will spread through their organizations. By the time this article is published, I will have traveled to Santiago, Chile. There I will have again pushed the HPT agenda. Ask me how it turned out.

Laura Mastrangelo and Emily Marovich represent SkillsNET Enterprises, based in Waxahachie, Texas, in the role as Advocate Representatives to ISPI. Laura and Emily, senior skills analysts, are part of SkillsNET Enterprises’ Industrial Psychology Solutions Group (IPS), a world-class team of industrial and organizational psychologists, assessment specialists, and training developers. The group focuses on providing organizations with innovative and practical solutions to organizational and employee performance issues through skills and competency analysis, employee assessment, and workforce development.

SkillsNET’s mission is to enable companies and organizations to optimize their workforce to meet the changing market forces by providing the next generation of foundational human capital enterprise technology and solutions, regardless of industry size. SkillsNET recognizes that every organization needs to understand how its employees perform their jobs, and strategic decisions about personnel and organizational direction are greatly influenced by the knowledge of job performance throughout a company. Potential employees are selected based on a manager’s understanding of what is required to accomplish a specific job, and existing employees are measured on their performance of work based on this same knowledge and understanding. If an organization does not have an accurate picture of what its people do, then there is no way to know how to improve performance, to discover and remove inefficiencies in the job, or to simply grow. SkillsNET helps organizations to gain this knowledge through the careful collection of detailed, accurate job analytic and occupational data. Once these data are gathered and processed, organizations have a solid, scientifically proven understanding of how their workforce functions. Data can be used to establish required levels of performance, measure employee performance, and train employees to improve their performance to expected levels.

SkillsNET brings cutting-edge research for skills and competency identification and development to the workplace by allowing for rapid and valid design and delivery of workforce data. SkillsNET’s flagship online tool, SkillObject^® Designer, is used to define job specific occupational skills and competencies. SkillsNET’s SkillObject^® Mapper allows employees to rate their proficiency on this job information, along with enabling managers to rate an employee’s skills. Gap analyses then detail the training and performance improvement opportunities for employees. Additionally, the collected data provides the organization with highly accurate and detailed job information that may be used for training design, assessment development, or human capital planning. By successfully combining science and technology, SkillsNET advances skills content management with superior services solutions and best practices architecture to clients.

Identified by Inc. 500 in 2006 as one of the fastest growing companies in the United States, SkillsNET recently received the prestigious 2006 Dallas 100^™ Entrepreneur Award from the Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business. The annual award recognizes the 100 fastest growing and most dynamic privately held companies. For more information on SkillsNET Enterprises, visit www.skillsnet.com.

For more information on ISPI’s Advocate Program, contact Keith Pew, Director of Sales and Marketing, at marketing@ispi.org.

The Nominations Committee has announced the slate of candidates for the upcoming 2007-2009 Board of Directors election. This year the membership will elect a President-elect (3-year term, President-elect, President, and Immediate Past President) and two Directors (2-year term). They will join the President, three continuing Board members, and the non-voting Immediate Past President and Executive Director who make up the nine-member Board.

The slate was developed by the Nominations Committee, which received nominations from the membership and determined the willingness of those nominated to run. All the candidates meet the qualifications and criteria of the positions. For further information on the qualifications and criteria, click here. By mid-December, the Candidate Statement from each nominee will be posted on the ISPI website.

As a reminder, ISPI holds its annual Board election electronically, and active members vote for candidates to the Board online. Since your link to the “voting booth” is sent via email in mid-January, it is important for ISPI to have your most current email address. To review your record, visit www.ispi.org and click on Login. Or, you may call us at 301-587-8570.

The candidates for the 2007-2009 Board of Directors, listed in random order, are:

Now that the slate of candidates is complete, ISPI would like to thank the members of this year’s Nominations Committee for their hard work. The committee consisted of Cathy Brown (Chair), Ken Finley (Deputy Chair), Ann Parkman, Peter Nelson, Cloyd Hyten, Camille Ferond, and Sierra Hernandez.

In addition, ISPI would like to commend all the nominees for their willingness to serve the Society. The committee received more well-qualified nominees than the final ballot required and choosing candidates was tough going, just ask any of the committee members!

It is imperative for performance consultants to elevate their points of entry when they plan to work with a corporation. Although it seems much easier to talk to an HR director, training director, OD specialist, or someone at that level, performance consultants must realize that these people rarely have budget authority. Nor do they usually have the capability to make a decision that involves wholesale change in an organization. To accomplish this, we must get to the C level executives. Here is how you market and sell to a CEO, CFO, CHRO, COO, and so forth.

What a CEO Looks For
Here is a list of what CEOs are looking for from HPT efforts and performance consultants. There may be other issues for you to work on with a CEO.

What a CFO Looks For
The CFO is usually looking for some different things than the CEO. Although the CEO is mainly interested in the strategic advantages of the HPT effort, the CFO is interested in the financial feasibility of that effort. Obviously, strategy affects finances and vice versa. You still have to convince the CFO that the HPT effort makes financial sense. Listed below are what CFOs look for and what must be done to win them over.

General Benefits for C Level Executives
There are some general benefits that all C level executives want to see from every HPT initiative. When all of these benefits can be justified, you are well on your way to having a successful HPT implementation. If you can only achieve some of the benefits, remember that a small number of benefits are better than none at all. And, you must “emotionalize” these benefits so prospects and clients can feel the importance of HPT to their company. Consider this list and add to it:

Keep these ideas in mind as you market and sell to all C level executives. You will find your access increasing as well as your impact.

Note: This concludes the series on marketing HPT. Thanks to Richard Gerson for his contribution to PerformanceXpress and to the field of performance improvement. The Marketing Communications Committee is chartered to articulate the value proposition to market ISPI (and HPT) and its programs to targeted audiences. If you would like more information, contact Ken Steinman at ksteinman@comcast.net.

ISPI is pleased to announce and thank our recent Lifetime Members for their support of the Society and the field of performance improvement.

The newly designed Lifetime Membership was created to strengthen the partnership between ISPI and its members, both old and new. By being a partner, you belong to a Society focused on results and dedicated to helping your business grow by promoting the interests of the performance improvement industry. Lewis Parks, a recent Lifetime Member, said, “I decided to become a life member because I have always found ISPI to be a source of leading thinking and people willing to give to their profession and others looking to join our discipline.”

Sign up now! Become a Lifetime Member and NEVER PAY DUES AGAIN; plus, retain all member benefits, avoid future dues increases, receive lifetime discounts on ISPI products and services, never miss a member benefit because of a lapse in payment, and contribute to building your performance improvement community of the future.

For complete details on the lifetime membership, click here, or download a copy of the brochure by clicking here.

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.

Are you interested in attending ISPI’s 45th Annual International Performance Improvement Conference in San Francisco, California? Are you willing to attend pre-assigned sessions or workshops, open to monitoring sessions you may not have selected, and able to distribute and collect evaluation forms and assist ISPI presenters? If you answered yes to these questions, you may want to apply to be a Workshop or Conference Volunteer.

Workshop Volunteers: Workshops will be held Sunday, April 29, and Monday, April 30, 2007. Workshop Volunteers receive complimentary registration to the workshop they are assigned; however, if you wish to attend the conference, you must register at the appropriate rate. Workshop Volunteers do not receive a reduced conference registration fee. Workshop Volunteers must meet the following criteria:

Conference Volunteers: The conference dates are Sunday, April 30-Wednesday, May 3, with volunteers starting on May 1, 2007. Conference Volunteers shall receive the following discounted registration fees, which include one ticket to the Opening Reception, Bagel Barrel, and the Extravaganza.

Volunteers will be responsible for their own travel, hotel, and other costs associated with attending the conference. Volunteer positions are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis and will be filled with a preference given to ISPI student members, ISPI members, and then non-members, in this order. For more information or to apply, contact Kim Akoto at conference@ispi.org.

This online program is designed for performance improvement professionals with 5-10 years of experience moving into management. The courses provide concepts and skills necessary for you to:

Each course provides practical tools and advice, as well as the theoretical underpinning and vocabulary needed to more effectively explain and defend your strategic decisions.

At the 2007 International Performance Improvement Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, May 2, from 8:30-10:00 am, we will be presenting a Bagel Barrel. The Bagel Barrel is one of the most popular conference features. The idea is simple: fill a hotel ballroom with more than 35 presentations, one topic per table, and let conference participants choose their favorite topics. During each of the three 20-minute sessions, participants move to a different table to hear a new topic. It is high energy, fast-paced information, and loads of fun!

Do you have a cool idea, a brilliant performance tool, or unique technique you would like to share? This is a great way to get your feet wet presenting at an Annual Conference. It is easy; you take one topic and create a 20-minute presentation to present to a table full of eager participants. You repeat it three times.

Here is what we need from you, if you want to be considered to be a Bagel Barrel presenter:

The deadline to submit your Bagel Barrel presentation is December 15, 2006. Invitations to presenters will be made by January 31, 2007. Send your proposal via email to: conference@ispi.org with the subject line: Bagel Barrel Presentation Proposal. If you have questions, contact Kim Akoto, ISPI director of meetings, at kima@ispi.org.

All Bagel Barrel presenters receive a “Presenter” ribbon and the satisfaction they are doing their part to spread the performance improvement message and make this the best conference ever. It’s a great way to get involved!

The International Society for Performance Improvement is offering an incredibly informative line-up of ProSeries Workshops: February 20-21 and 22-23, in Phoenix, Arizona.

NEW! Carl Binder’s Building Fluent Performance for Results will present a systematic, research-based methodology for designing and implementing activities to improve the impact of classroom and on-the-job training, supervision, coaching, and self-study programs.

NEW! Sharon Shrock and William Coscarelli’s Constructing and Critiquing Level Two Evaluation and Certification Systems will provide you with the basic tools to critique currently existing tests in your organization as well as turnkey skills for creating defensible Level Two assessments or certification tests.

Geary Rummler’s Introduction to Serious Performance Consulting will take you beyond job-level performance improvement for individual workers to an exploration of the process and organizational levels of performance improvement where HPT practitioners really can make a lasting contribution to their organizations.

NEW! Margo Murray’s Managing Mentoring Processes for Measured Results will provide guidelines and practice in the front-end strategies—needs/readiness assessment—and back end—evaluation and continuous improvement—to create sustainable mentoring processes.

A pre- and post-workshop conference call is included in the registration fee to provide participants with an opportunity to ask questions beforehand or clarify material upon returning to the office.

Upcoming Schedule

Conferences, Seminars, and Workshops
Add performance and pizzazz to your training. Whether it’s a 45-minute presentation or a week-long workshop, Thiagi can make your training come alive with interactive experiential activities. Nobody does instructional design faster, cheaper, and better than Thiagi. Visit http://thiagi.com/game-design-services.html.

Half-, One-, and Two-Day Workshops now available! Performance Beyond Borders, ISPI/IFTDO 2007 International Performance Improvement Conference, San Francisco, CA, April 30-May 3. Visit www.ispi.org/ac2007.

Workshops for the Performance Professional: Space is filling up quickly: February 20-21 and 22-23, 2007. Be the next one in your organization to experience this unique, two-day, peer-to-peer educational opportunity led by exceptional performance improvement professionals.

Education and Career Resources
Online and in-person MA & Graduate Certificate Programs. Instructional Systems Development, Instructional Technology, and e-Learning at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. GREs not required. Faculty are practitioners. Click here for more information.

ISPI Online CareerSite is your source for performance improvement employment. Search listings and manage your resume and job applications online.

Magazines, Newsletters, and Journals
The International Journal of Coaching in Organizations (IJCO) is a professional journal, published quarterly to provide reflection and critical analysis of coaching in organizations. The journal offers research and experiential learning from experienced practitioners representing various coaching schools and methodologies.

Performance Improvement journal is available to subscribers in print and online through John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Click here to order your subscription today.

Performance Improvement Quarterly, co-published by ISPI and FSU, is a peer-reviewed journal created to stimulate professional discussion in the field and to advance the discipline of HPT through literature reviews, experimental studies with a scholarly base, and case studies. Subscribe today!

ISPI Membership: Join or Renew Today!

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, 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:

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.

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.

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Phone: 1.301.587.8570
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R	Focus on Results
S	Take a System(s) Viewpoint
V	Add Value and focus on the business or organizational purpose
P	Establish Partnerships and work collaboratively