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Wouldn’t it be nice if the conflict we experienced on a daily basis could be resolved in such a way that everyone involved felt good about the resolution? Since this is different than the way many conflicts end up (check any newspaper if you doubt this), it involves change. And change is more likely to happen when the cost of doing nothing gets too high or the benefits of the change exceed the effort of changing. In the world of conflict management, the costs of interpersonal conflict include significant time, employee turnover (a frequently cited reason for employees leaving their work is a bad relationship with their immediate supervisor), missed opportunities, and so forth. The benefits of resolving conflict effectively include time savings, better working relationships (and measurably better employee retention), and higher productivity. When I work with leaders and managers, I usually get them to create a conflict income statement. They identify the financial and nonfinancial costs of conflict in their “sphere of influence” and also the potential financial and nonfinancial benefits of good conflict management. The challenge is to prevent the conflict that does not need to happen, and when conflict does happen, to view it as a source of “profit” or productivity. In my work with organizations, I invite participants to identify the most frequent sources of conflict they experience and to prepare to address these sources more effectively in the future. It is fun to think about those conflict triggers as invitations to conflict, and it is empowering to realize that we do not have to attend every conflict we are invited to. When sources of conflict relate to our perception of another person’s behavior, we have essentially three choices:
The SDI (Strength Deployment Inventory—a validated psychometric) reveals the way people are motivated when things are going well, and how motivation changes in conflict. The word motivation is used here as a sense of purpose as opposed to whether or not a person is demonstrating some energy toward a task. Many conflict triggers have a connection to the way a person is motivated when things are going well. For example, if I am generally motivated to get results and accomplish goals, I am more likely to perceive strict adherence to procedure as a conflict trigger than is someone who is generally motivated to create order and maintain independence. Communication, both when things are going well and during conflict, can be dramatically improved with insight into motivation—one’s own, and the other person’s. Want some more? In two days (April 4–5) at ISPI’s preconference workshop SDI Qualification, you can learn how to apply these concepts and more—plus be qualified to facilitate the workshop with others (at a significant discount to the price of the same course that we offer for open enrollment). If you want to invest 90 minutes and $0.00 for an overview (not a professional qualification), you can attend the “Have a Nice Conflict” session during the conference. Until then, think about the impact on you and your organization if you could prevent 25% of the conflict you experience and get 25% better results when you do have conflict. Case studies to support much higher percentages are available at www.personalstrengths.com.
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The International Society for Performance Improvement is proud to bring you The Performance Improvement Conference, April 5–8, 2008, in New York City. Register by January 25 and save! Have you checked out the lineup for The Performance Improvement Conference? The theme says it all—Enhancing Knowledge, Know-How, and Results. I have looked over the proposals and they are not only top-notch (as usual) but are going to boost your ability to provide your employer or clients that extra something that sets you apart. Our presentation evaluators did a great job of checking out the details of every proposal—thanks to you all! Our leaders in the field at the conference range from Keynote speakers (IBM’s Nancy J. Lewis and Brenda M. Sugrue) to Master’s Presenters (Karen Preston, Deb Russell, Darryl Sink, Piers Steel, John W. Lewis II, Diane Gayeski, Brian Desautels, and Jane Brenneman) to HPT Institutes, Workshops, and Encore Presentations. You won’t want to miss any of them. Some things will be familiar, and a few will be changed. To pick up the NYC theme, the Cracker Barrel will become an Apple Barrel, and it is on the first day, too. The Community Center will truly be the hub of the conference for meeting, gathering information, and checking out what is new in the field. We are having a photo wall and strongly encourage everyone to bring their digital cameras, snap what is happening, and then share the photos. And the Special Event is a harbor cruise. Those of us who have been planning this conference are convinced you will not be disappointed. The ISPI professional staff and your ISPI Conference Committee colleagues are more than pleased with what we have put together. Join us! Learn from each other, share ideas and experiences that raise your level of professional practice, and enjoy—it is in New York City. |
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From the Board: ISPI members may have noticed that ISPI has been asking a lot of questions recently. What is going on? ISPI is gaining insight into the expectations of its members. The Society wants to know who comes and why they come to conferences or institutes; who applies for and renews Certification of Performance Technology (CPT) and why. We need to know why professionals and students join ISPI, and why they continue to remain as members. All of these efforts are to better adapt to future changes in our professional life. Everyone notices that our world has many more active communication opportunities, including the Internet, phone, postal and package delivery services, and more possibilities. For example, ISPI is improving web capabilities; providing more information via email, including more networking possibilities for conferencing. We know that our members like to connect with experts. We continue to enhance conferences, institutes, Pro Series, and webinars to provide more contact with experts. When our members attend, they are able to network with attendees sharing similar experiences. When we strengthen our connections with experts and other members, the Board refers to these efforts as our “S” of Society in ISPI. We have confirmed the importance of chapters and our international involvement. When we focus on international, the Board refers to the “I” of International. We are providing more services to chapters, thus augmenting our alignment and interface. We have designated one member of future ISPI Boards of Directors to be from outside North America to ensure there will be at least one voice for broader, global issues. How did the Board come to these insights? By combining the results of many recent surveys, such as the senior leadership survey, the appreciative inquiry survey to all members, conference feedback, research studies, and external scans. Appreciative
Inquiry Appreciative Inquiry Conclusions Regarding ISPI
Appreciative
Inquiry Survey Recommendations
As you read this article, you may want to provide ISPI with further ideas. We are “all ears.” You may be a PerformanceXpress reader and not a member of ISPI. We want to know what you are thinking. You may be a member with another helpful idea. We want to know what you are thinking too. Please send your ideas, comments, or suggestions to Darlene Van Tiem at dvt@umich.edu. Any and all ideas will be summarized and reported to the Board of Directors and ISPI staff. |
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Announcing
a New Tradition! ISPI’s SkillCast Are you finding it a challenge to keep up professionally? Got a stack of books and articles you keep meaning to get to? Let ISPI provide that vital professional boost with our new SkillCast series (a clever take on the webcast). Designed to enhance the skills and knowledge of the performance improvement professional, ISPI’s SkillCast each month will feature the latest thinking from the experts you rely on for your continued professional development. In just an hour a month, you will come away with new ideas, perspectives, and tools that you can put to work immediately. Put your focus on your own results, for a change, and join our first SkillCast!
Contact ISPI for additional information on how to register for our premier SkillCast, 301.587.8570, or visit our website: www.ispi.org. |
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How to
Make It Big as a Performance Consultant Imagine for a moment that someone was going to give you the keys to the kingdom for marketing performance consulting services. And now imagine that there were three keys. The first is knowledge, skills, and abilities, which you already possess. The second is a desire, passion, and resilience to help people and organizations improve their performances all over the world. You may already own this key also. The third key, which is the one most performance consultants are still searching for, is how to market, promote, and sell their performance consulting services. Because most performance consultants are technical experts (they know their field) and not marketing experts, they, like other technical experts, require help to get the word out. When you acquire this third key, you will open the door and receive these benefits:
Years ago, a newly minted performance consultant came to me and asked me to help save his dying business. He had already spent $30,000 on advertising (and what he called marketing) and had no clients to show for it. He said he had $20,000 left and wanted me to tell him where to advertise to get clients. I suggested he use the money to hire me as his consultant and coach, and we would get him the business he desired. The result of that arrangement was he made $50,000 in the next 12 months. Although that may not seem like a lot for a performance consultant starting out 10 years ago, you must remember he was on the verge of losing $50,000 because someone gave him bad advice and told him to advertise. If you want to get a great return on your marketing dollars, then you must come to my one-day workshop on Friday, April 4, held prior to ISPI’s The Performance Improvement Conference 2008. As a performance consultant, how often have you wondered if you were pricing your services properly? Are you underpriced just so you can generate business? Are you nervous about quoting your price to a prospect? Are you making enough money or as much as you should? And how do you find prospects? Or, more appropriately, how do prospects find you? And what about referrals? Do you have a referral and lead-generating system in place so that people send prospects to you? And do you know the “magic phrases” to say to get people to refer business to you? You will learn all this and more when you attend my workshop. Two final point must be made about this workshop: First, it is a repeat performance. We have done it before to rousing success, reviews, and results. Second, if you have been reading PerformanceXpress, you know I have been writing a series of articles on marketing performance consulting services. You will get the benefit of those articles, plus much more. The only problem is that participants want more, and we only have one day. So, before the workshop fills up and closes out, and before you get left out and deprived of learning some of the latest techniques to market your performance consulting services, register today. Now, let me answer a few questions that have come up since previous workshops. Yes, I do make more money than is mentioned in the workshop description in the conference brochure, and I am an independent consultant. Yes, I do practice what I preach in my workshops, books, and articles. And, yes, I do coach my competitors to achieve as much success as they can handle. So, if you want to tap into what works in marketing performance consulting services, I will see you on April 4. And one more thing. I will teach you how to use publishing to make you a magnet to attract business, serve clients, and do well by doing good. |
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ISPI, along with Geary Rummler, Carl Binder, Donald Tosti, and Margo Murray, will be coming to Westin Horton Plaza San Diego, February 12–15, 2008, for our Professional Workshop Series. Be the next one in your organization to experience this unique, two-day, peer-to-peer professional development opportunity led by experts in the field of performance improvement.
Before “lean”, Six Sigma, knowledge management, or one-minute cures, our presenters were breaking new ground in the principles and practices of performance technology. Participants will work with proven tools and techniques and learn new approaches to enhance value for both the organization and the client.
These workshops are limited in size to ensure participants receive individual attention from presenters and quality time to interact with other attendees. Upon completion of the program, you will receive a Certificate of Completion. In addition, you can earn up to 12 CPT points toward recertification. For more information, visit www.ispi.org/ProSeries. |
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I experienced RSVP as a volunteer for ISPI! Working on the Volunteer Committee gave me an opportunity to learn from colleagues, take responsibility, and experience a great model in RSVP. Yes, a committee can focus on Results, apply a Systems approach, add Value to our organization, and Partner with other committees and the ISPI leadership. The Volunteer Committee
I had the honor of serving as the 2007 Volunteer Committee member who served as a liaison with the Nominations Committee. The Nominations Committee has the responsibility of taking each nominee through a criterion-based selection process and reference calls. I was active with this committee for three months, August through October. The Results were a list of qualified candidates, application of a Systematic process, Value gained from using the process and procedural forms, and great Partnership among committee members. Committees are a great way to practice what we teach and learn from colleagues. Contact the Volunteer Committee at volunteers@ispi.org to indicate your interest in giving back to ISPI and experiencing RSVP! |
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Training and performance consulting leaders need fast, credible, and efficient methods for finding out what is working, and what is not. Traditional evaluation studies that attempt to artificially isolate training “causes” rely on suspicious statistical gyrations or lead to misleading presumptions about causation and outlandish return-on-investment (ROI) claims. Because there are always some—or even many—trainees who do not use their training at all, average estimates and other single-metric indicators such as those derived from traditional research methods always misrepresent the real picture. What is needed is a practical way to answer these critical questions:
The answers to these questions determine the value of training and directly support decisions to improve the training impact rate or abandon failing efforts and develop new solutions. Dozens of research and evaluation studies have concluded this: What makes training work has more to do with the performance system than with the training design and delivery itself. The difference is the manner in which the company (or business unit) plans and uses the training, as well as the influence of the prevailing systemic factors such as work habits, reward systems, preparedness of learners, measures, and feedback procedures, to name a few. When we use the Success Case Method (SCM) we almost always discover that some people used their new learning in impactful ways, and others did not. But why were some trainees able to persevere despite performance system obstacles and make such good use of their training? What helped them? Why did some not try at all? What (or who) got in their way? What factors discouraged the large proportion of trainees and eventually forced their performance back to the pretraining levels? The Success Case approach is deceptively simple. It achieves efficiencies by purposive versus random sampling, focusing the bulk of inquiry on only a relative few trainees. The notion is that we can learn best from those trainees who have done the best at applying their learning in their work, and from those trainees who have been the least successful. Although simple in concept, the SCM has been highly evolved over the last decade and employs carefully constructed sampling, survey analysis, and interview instrumentation. Opening
the Door to Performance Consulting Register today to attend The Performance Improvement Conference and experience all Robert has to offer in his Encore Presentation and prior to the event during a one-day workshop copresented with Tim Mooney, Driving and Measuring Individual and Business Performance Results from Training: The High-Impact Learning Approach. Note: Based on Robert O. Brinkerhoff, Telling Training’s Story (Berrett-Koehler, 2006) and a new book on applying the SCM in training organizations, Courageous Training, to be published by Berrett-Koehler in 2008. |
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Join the Alumni List for ISPI’s HPT Institute Program There is a great deal of talk about aligning human resources, quality, and training departments with business and about building performance-based organizations. We at the International Society for Performance Improvement believe this is a good thing. After all, we have been quietly leading the way since 1962. To view our impressive list of HPT Institute alumni who uphold ISPI’s mission and vision in their daily work, click here. ISPI is an international association of professionals who are dedicated to improving individual and organizational performance through systematic, measurable, and reproducible means. Our members and chapter members in some 40 countries utilize a performance improvement process that includes performance analysis, cause analysis, intervention selection and design, implementation, and evaluation. The intervention may involve training; it may not. Either way, each successful application results in positive changes to the competence, abilities, and performance of the workforce. This process, which ISPI refers to as Human Performance Technology (HPT), is taught during an Institute. During The Performance Improvement Conference 2008, we will be offering two Institutes:
For more information or to register click here. Make it your goal in 2008 to attend an ISPI educational program and add your company to our list of alumni. |
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The
Enterprise Process Performance Improvement Model The Death of Six Sigma? A recent online article in the Canadian Report On Business (The Big Idea: Six Stigma by Ken Hunt; online 9/27/07) suggests that Six Sigma fanaticism may be waning. A quote: “A recent study from QualPro, a consulting firm that advocates an alternative quality process, points out that 53 of 58 large companies that use Six Sigma have trailed the S&P 500 ever since they implemented it.” Just as TQM (Total Quality Management) zealots saw the demise of their star in the 1990s, Six Sigma may be losing some its advocates. It is too bad because both had something of real value to offer.
As a fan of both, I feared the myopia around each would eventually kill them off. TQM is, for all practical purposes, now dead. And perhaps, Six Sigma is beginning to slowly die, but I hope not. It does have something of value to offer—but not for every situation. TQM and Six Sigma are not the be-all, end-all that many practitioners believe and tout. The adaptation of “Lean” into the Six Sigma mix was a good sign. One would not want to drive process performance to a Six Sigma level—3.4 defects per one million opportunities—for a fat and sloppy process with all sorts of unnecessary redo-loops. Lean efforts should precede Six Sigma efforts. But not every process performance issue (problem or opportunity) will be improved by either methodology. What if the process was lean and in enough statistical control, but the performers were underperforming because of their disenchantment with certain managers or with pay or promotion opportunity equity? I see little in the Six Sigma bag of tricks or tools that would adequately address those root causes, just as I thought the TQM tools and techniques of the 1970s–1990s were inadequate for the people factor in the performance equation. My
Approach The diagram below is an example of the “nonpolitically correct” fishbone/cause-and-effect versions of the Ishikawa Diagram from the early 1980s when I first learned about it at Motorola.
The
Process
Some processes are core but many more are not; many are leadership or support in nature and just as necessary. Next is my model for organizing the processes of any department adapted to look at the areas of performance (AoPs: major duties, accomplishments, etc.) for both management and individual contributors.
In this approach, each department has its own core processes. Isn’t the payroll process core too? Some processes need to be in very tight control, others not so. Does the process for script development for Saturday Night Live need tight control—or looser control? All processes have stakeholders with requirements and desires—and all stakeholders’ requirements are hierarchal. The next diagram presents my version of such a hierarchy.
If this hierarchy does not fit your situation, adapt it to do so. One size often is the wrong fit. The “Customer is Not King,” although customer requirements often lead to the development of products and services or changes in how those are developed and delivered. But if they violate the requirements of management and executives with fiduciary responsibilities to the owners—game over. And, of course, it does not really matter what the owners or management or customers want if that would violate the laws of the land, for the government stakeholder wins all conflicts. Do not pass GO, do not collect $200, go directly to jail—the game of Monopoly taught many of us. A process and its “paper design” that will meet or beat the balanced stakeholder requirements is not anything without the people and non-people asset enablers that are necessary to bring it to life.
The
Human Asset Enablers
Use this model to help structure your assessments of missing or inadequate enablers from the people factor of process performance. The
Environmental Asset Enablers
Use this to help structure your assessments of the missing or inadequate enablers necessary. Summary Guy W. Wallace, CPT, has been an external ISD and HPT consultant since 1982, is the president of EPPIC Inc., has been a member of ISPI since 1979, is a past president of ISPI, is the author of lean-ISD, and is a recipient of an ISPI 2002 Award of Excellence. He may be reached via guy.wallace@eppic.biz, and related resources may be obtained at his website, www.eppic.biz, including his three most recent books available as free PDFs: lean-ISD, T&D Systems View, and new in 2007, Management Areas of Performance. |
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Listed below are the most recent Job Postings that have been added to ISPI’s newly designed Job Bank, click here to view all jobs. EDMC
Online Higher Education University
of Illinois W.L.
Gore & Associates, Inc. Amedisys Resource
Associates Corporation
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Performance Marketplace is a convenient way to exchange information of interest to the performance improvement community. Take a few moments each month to scan the listings for important new events, publications, services, and employment opportunities. To post information for our readers, contact ISPI Director of Marketing, Keith Pew at keithp@ispi.org or 301.587.8570.
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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. Newsletter Submission Guidelines 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. 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 at april@ispi.org. ISPI1400 Spring Street, Suite 260 Silver Spring, MD 20910 USA Phone: 301.587.8570 Fax: 301.587.8573 info@ispi.org www.ispi.org
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