by Mark J. Lauer, CPT

It can be a bit jarring for somebody when they learn their company is going to implement a major quality initiative. Whether it is adopting Six Sigma metrics or embracing lean manufacturing, any fundamental change in how a company “works” makes for anxious times. This is especially so when most of these initiatives involve some new form of accountability or measurement of performance. While others may be intimidated or anxious when these types of quality initiatives are introduced, we shouldn’t be. After all, this is our game.

We should be the “go to” people of any quality initiative. Our HPT-based worldview should complement any quality initiative. We have recognized the value of a performance focus for a long time now. Our organizing principles are all related to the improvement of human performance and are ideal for leveraging in a quality initiative. It isn’t so much a matter of finding our role in the quality initiative, as it is ensuring those of influence are aware of the valuable contribution we can make to the overall effort. We were into performance before performance was cool.

Let’s take a look at lean manufacturing. The average performance technologist is ideally suited to play an important role in any lean transformation. First, this is our sandbox. There isn’t anything here that will surprise us. We share many of the same viewpoints that shape lean transformations. One thing to remember about lean manufacturing is that it isn’t just about processes or tools. It is more about culture and philosophy. This takes it from the solitary domain of the engineer and drops it right onto the HPT plate.

Lean manufacturing is focused on eliminating waste and continuously improving all processes so as to increase customer value. The standard lean package is composed of six primary elements: Standardized Work Practices, Kanban, Total Productive Maintenance, 5S, Quick Changeover, and Continuous Improvement. A quick (and very general) rundown below shows all of these elements are within our skill sets.

• Standardized Work Practices are the backbone of any lean system. They are the organization and specification of the sequence of steps that must be followed every single time in a particular manufacturing activity. ISPI’s fifth competency standard specifically includes job, task, or process analysis. These are the primary activities in developing standardized work practices.

• Kanban is primarily a communication/visual inventory control tool. Again, in the fifth standard there is applicability in the need to be competent in Work Environment Analysis. This competency involves identifying the effectiveness of feedback, information, and communication systems. All of these are directly applicable in creating a kanban system.

• Total Productive Maintenance involves the broadening of the traditional view of maintenance into making basic maintenance part of everybody’s job. We can contribute to this change because we are skilled in task analysis and analyzing incentives and motivation.

• We can make a similar contribution in any 5S effort. 5S is focused on affecting behavioral changes that will lead to improving work performance through bringing order and organization to the workplace and work process. Again, task and incentive/motivation analysis play important roles.

• Quick Changeover is about altering work processes and creating greater organization and efficiencies in changeover procedures. Once more, directly related to our skills in job, task, and process analysis.

• Finally, Continuous Improvement involves incentives, communication, and a host of different analyses that are also found in our competency set.

Each of these elements relates directly to improving human performance. And in each, we find a direct link to our competencies. As performance technologists, we are a valuable resource in any quality initiative. Six Sigma has its Black Belts and lean has its experts, but we don’t need to feel intimidated. We have our CPT credential and a field with an established track record. We are all fellow travelers on the performance improvement road. We bring to the table a long dedication to human performance improvement and expertise that is not at conflict with theirs but is a perfect complement to it. We are all comrades in arms.

Mark J. Lauer, CPT, is a consultant with Performance Knowledge, Inc. in Bloomington, IN. He is also a doctoral candidate in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University. Mark may be reached at mjlauer@insightbb.com.

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by Carol Haig, CPT and Roger Addison, CPT

Carl Binder, is a principal in Binder Riha Associates, a consulting firm offering research-based performance improvement services to sales, marketing, and customer service organizations in Global 2000 and fast growth companies. Carl took a break from writing his own monthly column, Measurement Counts! in this publication to chat with us about his predictions for HPT in the next two to three years. He may be reached at CarlBinder@aol.com.

Top Predictions
First, Carl sees that organizations will continue to take a cautious approach to investments in training and HR initiatives. Many perceive that budget reductions in recent years have had few adverse effects. This may result in more stringent requirements to justify such expenditures in the future, causing organizational leaders to find less relevance in training offered in isolation or purchased off the shelf and more through performance improvement initiatives targeted to specific business outcomes. For example, we may see fewer investments in general communication or management training programs and more customized interventions designed to improve specific aspects of manager productivity such as financial decision-making or managing particular types of processes.

Second, the pressure within organizations to show tangible results for all work activities will increase the desire to measure their effects. For HPT, clients will rely decreasingly on training measures, such as pre- and post-tests, and will instead demand true performance measures. Rather than using percent correct measurements on knowledge tests, for example, clients may use baseline or ongoing measures of performance for specific job tasks or processes.

Third, as organizations succeed in producing more with fewer resources, they will realize that training cutbacks do not spell disaster and that, generally, business continues in the absence of training. Ultimately, this will change the way our clients view the need for performance improvement work. In response we, as performance improvement professionals, will have to visibly link our interventions to specific business results to show the effects of our work thus enabling our clients to see that they’ve made wise investments in our services.

HPTers will likely find that tight, competitive markets will challenge many of our client relationships and show that the most successful among us are connecting directly with high-level management clients beyond the HR function. (For more information on this topic, read the interview with Jim Hill in the March issue of PX.)

Why These Predictions
Carl finds that sales and customer service organizations display a growing interest in training that is combined with non-training interventions such as on-the-job coaching or job aids—solutions that follow formal training into the job itself and carry new skills and knowledge toward practical application.

As the demand for meaningful results from all activities continues to grow within organizations, the pressure to measure results will intensify. Historically, clients are initially excited about the notion of measurement but rapidly lose interest when they actually have to do it. Today, they are retaining their interest, even when neither they nor their HR professionals are entirely sure how or what to measure. Apparently, a constrained budget can be very motivating.

Performance improvement professionals frequently mention the importance of measuring the results of our work. However, we often find that data are difficult to access and that measurement itself is challenging. Indeed, many of us lack the basic skills needed to measure results. We may encounter a client organization that invokes non-disclosure policies to prohibit the sharing of data we request. In desperation, we resort to using subjective rating scales. What we should strive for is some direct measure of accomplishment tied to business results.

Finally, the monetary pressures mentioned so often in this space are causing even large, well-funded organizations to be cautious in their spending. In some organizations, this is exacerbated by a lack of respect for training that is tied to where the function is located within the hierarchy as well as an historic inability to discern meaningful results from training efforts.

How Organizations Will Be Different
The successful organizations of the future will be those in which the performance improvement professionals know the business and function as true business partners. We will learn about the operations we support from the leadership; in turn, they will learn how HPT can support and enhance their business successes. From this platform, HPT will be positioned to become a strategic business partner in forward-thinking organizations.

There is an inherent problem, both with the value we can add and in the marketing of our services, with our long-standing habit of presenting ourselves as HPT generalists rather than as specialists in particular industries. It will become increasingly important to have knowledge of the business processes of our clients and will help immeasurably if we can become highly knowledgeable about specific business functions and present ourselves that way. We will need to be able to speak fluently about our clients’ businesses to be credible with them. In return, our clients will have to respect our performance improvement expertise in the same way that they respect those of other disciplines such as product engineering.

Implications for Binder Riha
Binder Riha will continue to seek clients who are interested in improving their business results—sales, service, and marketing productivity—rather than just acquiring training. A focus on results as the ultimate pay-off will attract clients who already do measurement and are interested in doing it better. And early conversations about measurement will help clients prepare for the necessary data collection and analysis that will demonstrate impact on their business. For more information, visit ISPI’s GOT RESULTS?

As our TrendSpotters continue to tell us, focusing on the results of our HPT efforts is critical to the evolution of our field. They return us, again and again, to our core principles and practices and reinforce the standards upon which our Certified Performance Technologist designation is based.

If you have any predictions about the future of HPT that you feel would be of interest to the PerformanceXpress readership, please contact Carol Haig, CPT, at carolhaig@earthlink.net or Roger Addison, CPT, at roger@ispi.org.

by Geary A. Rummler, PhD, CPT

Performance consulting is a role that is rapidly gaining popularity, which I think is long overdue. I consider myself a performance consultant and, with a small cadre of colleagues, have been practicing this important craft for 35 years. But, I must admit that much of what I’ve seen published on the topic would be characterized as performance consulting “lite.”

Granted, when people embark on performance consulting as a career, they are necessarily nibbling around the edges of significant opportunities as they earn their stripes. Largely ignored, however, has been serious performance consulting, which moves beyond job-level performance improvement to process- and organization-level performance improvement. Those are the levels where performance consultants can make a greater and more long-lasting difference. And that’s what the book Serious Performance Consulting According to Rummler is all about.

Below are characteristics I feel distinguish the serious performance consultant (SPC):

• Committed to closing gaps in measurable results, like these:
  • Reduce errors in sales order forms from the current 13% to zero
  • Improve time for customers to receive orders from the current 15 days to 3 days
  • Improve market share from the current 38% to 48%
• Remain “solution neutral” during analysis. They have no preconceived idea of the solution until they understand the root cause of the gap in results.
• Employ a validated, robust methodology for:
  • Determining desired results
  • Identifying barriers to the desired results
  • Specifying the changes necessary to achieving the desired results
  • Evaluating the impact of the specified changes on results
• Command a broad repertoire of results improvement strategies and tactics, beyond a single or narrow range of solutions. (e.g., training, team building, Six Sigma)

Serious performance consulting is usually a role played by an individual, not a full-time job, and is not for everyone. Let me illustrate some of these distinctions with an example.

ABC is a successful regional life insurance company that does business in five states. The Vice President of Sales approaches a training analyst in the corporate training organization and requests training for the sales force. At this point, the request and subsequent project can go in several different directions, depending on the role the training analyst is playing, or the “hat” he/she is wearing.

If the analyst is wearing the traditional “trainer” hat, he/she may respond to the request with an “OK,” and either begin looking for outside vendors to provide sales training or begin the training needs analysis.

If the analyst is wearing the performance consultant or performance-based training “hat,” he/she will most likely ask, “What’s the problem? What are you trying to accomplish?” The VP responds that he/she wants to use sales training as a way to get the sales forces in the five states to have a common approach to selling, to get them all “singing off the same page.” In this case, the analyst might say, “Okay, let me look to see what the training needs are across the states.”

If the analyst is wearing the serious performance consulting hat, he/she might ask, “Why? What’s the problem? What are you trying to accomplish?” And, when told of the desire for a uniform approach to selling, will respond with something like, “But isn’t the real issue that our sales have been flat for the past seven quarters while the industry has been growing at 6% a year? Why don’t we make the objective of our project to improve sales by 4% next year and 7% the year following?” The VP of Sales is surprised by this response and says, “You think you can help with that objective?” The analyst/SPC says, “I believe so. Give me three weeks to do some digging, and I’ll get back to you with a plan for what I think is involved and how we might proceed.”

In three weeks, the analyst/SPC presents the VP of Sales with a diagram that shows five variables that appear to contribute to flat sales, including:

• No agreed-upon sales process across the company
• No uniform sales management process across the company
• A product line that is “tired” and rapidly becoming non-competitive
• A market niche that is undergoing intensified competition
• Inadequate product knowledge on the part of sales representatives

Based on this preliminary analysis, the VP of Sales elects to “back-up” and develop a growth strategy that includes targeting new markets, developing new products, up-grading the recruits into the sales representative position, creating a uniform sales process, creating the first formal sales measurement and management system, and training sales reps in how to sell the new products to the new markets.

As illustrated in this brief example, a SPC:

• Goes beyond the initial request for help to find a viable critical business issue and a gap in results and establish how success of the project will be evaluated. (This requires that the SPC clearly understands his/her clients’ business.)
• Uses a performance analysis framework to identify the variables impacting the gap in results.
• Specifies a solution set that addresses all significant factors that affect the gap in results.

The three possible responses to the case situation above represent three distinct points on a continuum of performance improvement (i.e., trainer or “solution-provider,” performance consultant, and serious performance consultant). In the book Serious Performance Consulting According to Rummler, I argue hard for pushing the envelope to the SPC end of the continuum wherever possible and provide an extensive case study illustrating how this can be done. SPC is the ideal. But in reality, the internal analyst can’t (and shouldn’t) make the SPC response to many of the requests he/she receives for assistance. Some requests show no measurable gap in results and no tolerance for analysis and exploring alternatives to the preconceived “solution” arrived at by the requestor/client. In those cases, you deliver and do your best to learn what you can about the client organization and the performance situation so you can push the envelope further the next time and hopefully put your serious performance consulting capabilities to good use.

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by Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan, PhD, CPT

RAMEs (Replayable Asynchronous Multiplayer Experiences) are web-based games that collect valuable ideas from virtual focus groups.

I Need Your Help
You chose me to be the ISPI President-elect for 2004-2005. According to the job description, “the President-elect serves to provide continuity of programs, goals, objectives, and strategic direction in keeping with policy established by the Board of Directors.” That sounds profound, but I have been conditioned to seek performance-based objectives. So, I asked a past president (who wishes to be anonymous) exactly what I should I be doing during my President-elect year. She (or he) said, “For the next 12 months keep your mouth shut in Board meetings, fetch coffee for the other Directors, and undertake a variety of menial chores such as photocopying.” This is performance-based all right, but not too inspiring. So, I am asking you for advice and help. Let’s do that in a playful manner with a RAME activity called “Best of the Best.”

Let’s Play “Best of the Best”
This RAME has three rounds, and it will take about 5 to 15 minutes to complete each round.

• Round 1. Contribute a piece of advice for exemplary behavior as a President-elect.
• Round 2. Review a set of advice from other players and select the top two. (Other players will review your advice and compare it with other pieces of advice.)
• Round 3. Review the best pieces of advice selected by different groups and select the top two “best-of-the-best” advice.

Why You Should Participate
Here’s what’s in it for you:

• You will enjoy playing and scoring points.
• You will enjoy contributing a valuable idea.
• You will learn a process for effective and enjoyable data collection from online focus groups.
• When I become the ISPI President, I will appoint the winners as my unofficial Panel of Advisors.

Ready for the First Round?
Click here to visit the website and register yourself as a player. It will only take you 15 seconds (unless your name is a long one like Sivasailam Thiagarajan). The registration deadline is Monday, May 10, 2003. You will get simple instructions for participating in the first round after the registrations are completed.

by Don Tosti, PhD, CPT, ISPI President

This may be the most exciting and challenging time to be President of ISPI in its history. (I know, probably half of all people who take office anywhere say something like that—but I really believe it.) Our technology has reached a level of development that allows us to begin establishing agreement on the body of knowledge that defines our field.

Past president Guy Wallace assembled a task force to start that activity and the results have been most gratifying. The task force’s first activity was to develop a working definition of performance technology and a set of guidelines on what should, or should not, be included in the field. It also generated a framework for organizing the multitude of variables that could influence performance. Finally, the group identified seven “professional communities” that are concerned with the application of human performance technology (HPT).

We have matured as a profession, and it’s time to expand our reach. The identification of professional communities provides an opportunity to do that.

Since every organization is a human performance system and most activities in an organization are performed by people, it seems safe to say, then, that virtually every aspect of an organization can be influenced by applications of HPT.

So, why aren’t we doing that? Why isn’t the field more respected? It’s not because it doesn’t work; not because we have applied it inappropriately; not because we lack tools; not because we lack interventions. I believe it’s because we haven’t got the message across yet. ISPI (and/or performance technology) have often been called one of the best-kept secrets around. We have not communicated the power of HPT to solve a multitude of real-world problems.

Maybe we have been too unwilling to take on large projects that get widespread publicity. Maybe we have been too limited in our applications, focusing largely on fixing broken systems rather than designing better ones. Maybe we have been too limited in extending and promoting our inventions. The best known—training and job aids—are among the oldest. As a result, few have seen the full power of our field.

But that’s the past, and we can’t undo it. The question facing us now is what can we do about it? How can we actively demonstrate and promote the idea that our technology has the potential to be one of the most powerful and most important technologies in the world today? And what is ISPI’s responsibility in that area?

Since its inception, ISPI has been primarily technology driven. Promoting the development and understanding of the technology has been a key purpose throughout our more than 40-year history. That has distinguished ISPI from most other related organizations and has been the primary attraction for many members. But, we haven’t done it well enough, yet—perhaps it’s only now that we are truly ready to take substantial steps forward.

The Society has seen several tough years. Financially, things are beginning to look up, but solvency is relevant only if it moves us toward meeting our purpose. We must exert all the energy we can to promoting and extending our technology. How?

• Leveraging. We are working at this through our alliances with ASTD and other organizations.
• Educating. We’re doing this now through our HPT Institutes and conferences, and we will soon be expanding those offers.
• Enrolling. This is one of the primary reasons for creating performance communities. By broadening our reach and clarifying our focus, we believe that ISPI can attract people from other areas and disciplines to participate with us in the joint development of HPT.

Human performance technology recognizes the expertise of others in related and overlapping fields. We are not trying to "compete" with anyone. Rather, we see HPT as an integrative and multiplying force when joined with other technologies to help organizations and people achieve better performance.

I call on every member to pay his or her dues. No, not in money but in effort. Promote, advocate, recruit. Tell stories of HPT successes around the water cooler and at parties. Tell experts in other fields like marketing, finance, sales, manufacturing, and new product development how HPT practitioners have worked together with people like them to produce great results. Share any stories you have about success in those areas with other HPT practitioners. If you are convinced of the power of HPT, soon others will be too. Help us make the seven professional communities a reality by encouraging professionals in other fields to join us.

An early financial supporter of ISPI member projects justified his investment in sometimes shaky ventures by saying, “I believe you guys are the only ones who can negotiate a better future.” Let’s begin doing that!

by Todd Packer

Who’s number one? In the field of human performance technology (HPT), I’d like to think it’s the International Society for Performance Improvement. Here at I-Spy, we seek to explore how the Internet can be a powerful tool to improve our work together. We’re number one, and we try harder, as it were.

Quick recap: Every month, three sites, one theme. While far from comprehensive, hopefully these sites will spark readers to look further and expand views about HPT. Please keep in mind that any listing is for informational purposes only and does not indicate an endorsement either by the International Society for Performance Improvement or me.

These are the general categories I use for the sites featured:

1. E-Klatch: Links to professional associations, research, and resources that can help refine and expand our views of HPT through connections with other professionals and current trends
2. HPT@work:Links to job listings, career development, volunteer opportunities, and other resources for applying your individual skills
3. I-Candy: Links to sites that are thought provoking, enjoyable, and refreshing to help manage the stresses and identify new ideas for HPT

The theme for this month’s column is Do the Math. Telephone numbers. Personal IDs. Outcome measures. Age. Shoe size. Numbers everywhere. A critical tool for analysis, some might say for civilization itself, is the intelligent use of numbers which forms the basis for success in assessing and improving human performance. Can you learn more about numbers this month? Count on it. Caution: Ranunculoid spelunking ahead.

E-Klatch
Guess what April 2004 was? Math Awareness Month! This year’s theme was the Mathematics of Networks. Even if you were too busy attending ISPI’s conference, it’s not too late to celebrate. Visit the Math Awareness Month site, sponsored by the Math Forum, whose mission is “to provide resources, materials, activities, person-to-person interactions, and educational products and services that enrich and support teaching and learning in an increasingly technological world.” For a lesson in humility, you can try the Problem of the Week “designed to provide creative, non-routine challenges for students in grades three through twelve.” You can also access a variety of math tools, including resources on Data Analysis and Probability & Statistics. With an abundance of information and resources for students, teachers, and researchers, this is a good place to learn again all you are supposed to know about math.

HPT@work
Now performance technologists cannot live by numbers alone. We need numbers with meaning. We are definitely not alone in that regard. For a highly comprehensive list of resources, visit the Open Directory Project’s listing on benchmarking and best practices. This extensive listing connects you to a variety of associations and resources to help you compare and discover methods of performance measurement in diverse settings, including industry and process-focused resources of the Knowledge Management Benchmarking Association, examples from the Office of the Secretary of Defense Quality Management Office Best Practices Database, and many others. With opportunities to sign up for free newsletters and access valuable evaluation tools, this list is a worthwhile source for improving your performance. The Open Directory Project is described as “the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors.” In case you’re curious, ISPI is listed on a directory of Performance Improvement resources.

I-Candy
Well, after a productive time marking benches and whatnot, you definitely deserve a break. How about a visit to the creative wanderings of a race of mathematically inspired spider-beings? Weave yourself over to Dr. Clifford Pickover’s Interactive Spider Geometry (Mygalomorph forms) to digitally transform a web on the Web. Far from random, a five-lobed object mathematicians refer to as a ranunculoid appears as you maneuver your mouse at this site. Dr. Pickover’s homepage also links to images, puzzles, and math fun galore. Some numbers on the creator of this site: “Dr. Pickover is currently a Research Staff Member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, where he has received over 30 invention achievement awards, three research division awards, and four external honor awards.”

Thank you for taking the time this month to learn some methods to this “math-ness.” Hopefully, it all adds up to improved performance. A+B= See you in June!

When he is not Internet trawling for ISPI, Todd Packer can be found improving business, non-profit, and individual performance through research, training, and innovation coaching as Principal Consultant of Todd Packer and Associates based in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He may be reached at tp@toddpacker.com.

Human Performance Technology in Organizations: Theoretical Foundations and Implications to the Contemporary Arab Environment is a new book written in Arabic by Abdel Bari Ibrahim Durra and published by the Arab Administrative Development Organization, Cairo.

• Introduction to HPT
• The meaning and characteristics of HPT
• The origins and foundations of HPT
• The prominent leaders of HPT
• Conceptual models of HPT
• Training and HPT
• Management consultancy and HPT
• High-performance working and workplace learning (as a sister movement to HPT which appeared in the UK)
• Jordanian private universities and high-performance working: A case study
• Implications of HPT to contemporary Arab environment

• Case studies. These three short case studies were taken from diagnosing HPT contexts.
• Modern technologies. The author wrote or translated from English into Arabic 12 exercises, questionnaires, and tools that bear upon HPT. Examples include an Organizational Diagnoses Questionnaire, an Action Research Exercise, and the Cause/effect (Ishikawa) Diagram.

Abdel Bari Ibrahim Durra is currently the President of Al-Isra Private University in Jordan. He is a professor, trainer, and management consultant. He is also the Chair-elect of The International Federation of Training and Development Organizations (IFTDO), a leading global organization in human resource development.

The ISPI Research Committee is now accepting proposals for the 2004-2005 Research Grant Awards. The Request for Proposal (RFP) is available by clicking here. All persons or groups who would like to apply are encouraged to do so by accessing the RFP and following the instructions. The deadline for submission is May 27, 2004.

Founded by a group of researchers, ISPI has a long tradition of encouraging performance-improvement practices that are supported by scientific research. This emphasis on proven research-based practices has distinguished the Society since its inception. If you have questions about this year’s research grant program, contact the Research Committee Chair, Will Thalheimer at will.thalheimer@work-learning.com.

by Roger Kaufman, PhD, CPT

I know this title is controversial; however, it is a timely question. Contributing to the bottom line is the mantra of performance improvement professionals. The conventional wisdom is to help organizations, and the people who work there, to “add to the bottom line.” Really? Is that all?

How about a closer look? Do we want to help organizations be successful? Sure. Do we want to help organizations thrive? Absolutely. Do we want the help them look good in the short run and die in the mid-run? I don’t think so. Is there life after the quarterly bottom line? Beyond the “business case?” Is the conventional wisdom and business model too shortsighted? I suggest, “yes.”

Our literature, which I will not repeat here, is almost unanimous in wanting to add value to the bottom line. In fact, the more recent “return-on-investment” and costs-benefit models are now including “bottom line” to their formulations. Is that enough? Are we really helping organizations by focusing narrowly and only on their business plans and on their definition of what brings profits?

Even if we see the myopia of this conventional approach, you might ask, “who are we to tell organizations what business they are in and should be in?” Who are we to attempt to guide them to sustained organizational success?” If we limit our practice to our conventional understandings and tools—improve performance and improve the bottom line—we will not be as helpful as we could be. We must have the courage and professional integrity to pitch in where we usually fear to tread.

In actuality, we are perhaps among the best to tell them. If we don’t, who will? Should we not help them get past conventional wisdom and thinking to be successful in both the short-term as well as in the future? How is the conventional “bottom-line” passion working? Think for a moment about current organizations. How many are we willing to invest in ourselves? What has happened to the “giants” of the market? How is Andersen doing? Tyco? WorldCom? GM? SunMicro?

These companies, and most others, are all not out of business to be sure. But many of them are shadows of their former selves. Will they come back? Some, perhaps. But should we help them accelerate the decline that they had (and still do) set as their business objectives? Should we not bring to the discussion that there must be life after the next quarterly profit and loss statement?

I am simply suggesting that we continue to add to our portfolio of performance improvement competencies. We can, and should, add assessment and then analysis tools that stretch thinking and planning beyond the conventional organizational objectives (net, net, net/bottom line) to extend to future and sustainable success. It isn’t that difficult. We already know the basics, and we are already results-oriented.

If we know how to do a needs (not “wants” or “solutions”) assessment at the individual performance level, then we know how—by simple extrapolation—how to do one for the total organization. And, if we know how to do a needs assessment at the organizational level, we know how, again by extrapolation and once again enlarging our frame of concern, we can do one for external clients and society. Reality shows that we have to align what organizations use, do, produce, and deliver to external contributions. We simply have to do the assessment and then analyses for each of these internal and external—including societal—impact areas.

Society? Absolutely. If any organization is not adding value to society, what are they doing? Subtracting value? (My thanks to Dale Brethower for this insight.) If we are not providing executives and managers with the data and associated tools for adding value within, as well as external to the organization, we are not helping them. And, we are not helping ourselves.

When we work with any organization, let’s help them to extend their thinking and reach beyond the conventional bottom line. Let’s show them how to add the societal bottom line to their thinking, planning, and doing. We only have to understand that our concepts and tools can be extended to taking everyone beyond the conventional bottom line.

The table below shows where we, as performance accomplishment specialists, can work and contribute. It also shows what each focus is called, and then an identification of the time horizons for attending to each.

If we are to extend our reach, our thinking, and our tools, then we can help organizations be successful in the immediate, short, and future time frames. If we simply focus on the conventional “bottom line” concerns, we are missing an opportunity to help our clients be successful. Successful immediately and into the future.

Roger Kaufman, PhD, CPT, is a past president of ISPI and has participated in every level of the Society for decades. He is professor emeritus, Educational Psychology and Learning Systems, and served as the director, Office for Needs Assessment and Planning (1978-2003), all at the Florida State University. In addition, Roger is Director of Roger Kaufman & Associates. He has authored 35 books and more than 230 articles on strategic thinking and planning, needs assessment, evaluation, and organizational and individual performance accomplishment. Roger may be reached at rkaufman@nettally.com.

The Certified Performance Technologist (CPT) designation is awarded by ISPI to experienced practitioners in the field of performance improvement and related fields such as instructional design and organizational development whose work meets the 10 Standards of Performance Technology and other application requirements.

Your application to become a CPT must be received at ISPI headquarters by June 15, 2004, or it will be held until the next processing deadline of November 15, 2004. For more information on becoming a CPT, or to download the application, visit www.certifiedpt.org.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Bureau of Global Health, is advertising a Request for Applications for a five-year $250 million global cooperative agreement to develop human capacity to implement quality health programs. The objectives of this activity are to improve workforce planning, allocation, and utilization; improve health worker skills; and strengthen systems for sustained health worker performance. New partnerships among organizations are encouraged. For more information about USAID global health programs, click here. Interested parties may view the RFA at www.fedgrants.gov.

The best training and performance jobs are at located on the International Society for Performance Improvement’s CareerSite. Post your resume for free, and find your next career. Tired of sifting through hundreds of generic ads searching for specific jobs? ISPI provides candidates with reliable employment opportunities in the performance improvement industry. Premier companies consider ISPI their best source for talent. Job seekers—post your resume for free!

• Complete control over confidentiality of your information
• Customized Job Search Agents working 24 hours/day
• Store up to 3 unique profiles—FREE!
• Post your resume for prospective employers
• Application tracking features

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 email 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 Senior Director of Publications, at april@ispi.org.

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