by Donald T. Tosti, CPT, PhD

There are several ways we can view improvement in any situation. One way is that which is exemplified in quality efforts. This approach focuses on reducing variation and, therefore, searches for the root cause of the variation and corrects it. Such a “mind set” is a logical development since quality grew out of industrial quality inspection. Inspectors look for defects and errors. So those who use quality improvement methods strive to reduce or eliminate as much error as possible. They can be seen in the current, most popular quantity method called Six Sigma. The name refers to the goal of reducing variance to one part in a million.

A second approach, which is often termed an engineering approach, characterized much of the early development in the field of Human Performance Technology (HPT). Our field has its origins in the psychological learning and performance laboratories. There the focus was on determining what facilitated or inhibited performance. Rather than focusing at what reduced variance in behavior these researchers were more concerned with what could be controlled to shape it in a desired direction. When these people left their laboratories, they were more inclined to take an engineering approach to finding ways to achieve their objective.

Both are legitimate, but each starts with different assumptions and, therefore, often leads to different outcomes. They also use somewhat different processes, although there is a great deal of overlap between the two.

Michael Liebman (2005) describes what this difference is: “Unlike those who tend to approach problems from a ‘bottom-up’ perspective by collecting data and seeking patterns, engineers take a ‘top-down’ approach, probing a specific system for clues, taking it apart and considering how each component can be handled in a tailored solution.”

Henry Petroski (2005) says, “Engineering is more akin to writing or painting, and that it is a creative endeavor that begins in the mind’s eye and proceeds into new frontiers of thought and action, where it does not so much find as make new things.”

The biggest difference is that engineering improvement focuses on means and enabling it, and quality improvement focuses on cause and eliminating it.

Engineering solves problems more through analysis and design than through troubleshooting and repair, although both are accepted as legitimate processes.

Over the years, some feel regrettably so, HPT has tended to drift more toward a quality or correction approach than the engineering or innovation approach to problem solving it used in its formative years.

My concern and those of others in the field (Wittkuhn, 2004) is that a linear focus on cause is incompatible with taking a true systems approach. Systems logic views everything as interdependent. Hence, there is any number of alternative ways to produce a given result. A range of “solutions” is possible, not just one that addresses a “root cause” issue.

An engineering perspective treats the organization as a system or a set of subsystems that has been acted on differentially by many elements that influence its state at critical points over time. Our job as HPT analysts, then, is to identify the various critical points to determine which can be controlled to produce the desired improvement. The requirement is to select from a number of possible interventions that would be most cost-effective given the resource requirements. There is almost never one solution, although there may be one best solution.

Quality is popular. It promises managers cost reductions and greater efficiency. Because it sells so well, the tendency within our field is to allow ourselves to be solely defined as “fixers” rather than “innovators.”

We have learned much from the quality field, but it threatens to limit our perspective to repair and correction as our main problem-solving focus.

If we also focus on innovation and the power of using HPT engineering methods in addressing performance issues, we can open new opportunities that just being gap fixers never would provide. It also can position us at a more strategic level in the organization since innovative solutions are more likely to impact revenue and competitive issues.

Through a wide range of present and yet-to-be-determined innovations, we can help individuals and organizations do a better job of creating value for all those who are their stakeholders. We are only at the threshold. The real promise of Human Performance Technology and its benefits is unlimited.

References
Liebman, M. (2005, July-August). An engineering approach to translation medicine. American Scientist, 296-298.

Petroski, H. (2005, July-August). Technology and the humanities. American Scientist, 304-307.

Wittkuhn, K. (2004). Models, systemic thinking and unpredictability in consulting. Performance Improvement, 43(6), 17-19.

Donald T. Tosti, CPT, PhD, is the managing partner of Vanguard Consulting, which specializes in the alignment of organizational processes and people with the stated strategy of the organization. He is an expert in organizational systems and his pioneering work on contingency management began in the 1960s. As the principle investigator for the multimedia leadership-management course conducted at the U.S. Naval Academy, Don adapted the methods of performance analysis to the study of leadership and management behavior. His subsequent work on modifying behavioral norms and leadership has demonstrated the power of human performance technology in organizations such as British Airways and General Motors. Don may be reached at Change111@aol.com.

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

If you have been spotting trends that may be of interest to the PerformanceXpress readership, contact Carol Haig, CPT, at carolhaig@earthlink.net or http://home.mindspring.com/%7Ecarolhaig or Roger Addison, CPT, EdD at roger@ispi.org.

by Elena F. Galbraith, CPT

In the August 2005 issue of PerformanceXpress, ISPI Director Captain Matt Peters talked about the frustrations of implementing performance improvement projects and the importance of sponsor and stakeholder involvement at the onset a project. I appreciate the sound advice he gave and want to challenge us to go a little deeper.

In sales, it’s all about collecting yeses. The more yeses you collect during the sales process, the greater likelihood you will win the sale. The same holds true in selling human performance solutions; the more involved and educated our clients are—the greater skin in the game—the greater likelihood the changes made will produce positive returns for the business.

Fundamental Premise

Getting Corporate Commitment
Positive change over time must be managed and owned by the people closest to the work. This sense of ownership is vital to realizing the potential value a proposed solution can bring to the business and to the individual. I say individual because, in the end, each individual must embrace the new way—whether a new process or new practice. As I see it, the two essential components are involvement and education. Let’s break each one down.

Involvement—Collecting the Yeses

• At the onset, client and key stakeholders articulate the business case for change (i.e., what is the current pain to the business and to them personally?). In addition, they explain the value of the change to the business and to them personally.
• Client participates in the performance analysis process—data gathering, data analysis (the more involvement the better).
• Clients co-derive and recommend cost-effective solutions that will resonate within the organization’s culture to bridge the gap between actual and desired performance.
  • At this point in the project, front-line managers and employees must have a voice. There is a big difference between commitment and compliance; and if managers and employees are not brought on board at this stage of the game, compliance is the likely outcome.
• Client assigns an internal resource to manage the overall change process—design, build, implement, and measure. This commitment requires investment by the organization in terms of time, money, and human capital.
  • The resounding cry for involvement by managers and employees is echoed here and cannot be understated.
  • The solution implemented becomes “static” in a dynamic work environment unless managed.

Education—HPT Fundamentals

• At the project onset, during the kickoff or alignment meeting, start teaching clients to fish. Make a convincing case for using the accomplishment-based approach to realizing business impact.
• Participation by the client and others in the organization throughout the project will begin the transfer process of HPT principles.
• Include a formal educational component as part of the solution set that teaches HPT fundamentals and exposes the human performance system as proactive levers the organization can pull to manage the change process.

In synopsis, involve the client early, look for opportunities to transfer ownership of the solution, and give what you know away!

Elena Galbraith, CPT, is Vice President, Performance Improvement for Exemplary Performance, LLC [EP], based in Annapolis, Maryland. She heads up EP’s western region office in Washington state. With over 20 years experience in the human performance business, Elena has been a practitioner in the field of human performance improvement since the early 1990s. Her passion is to evangelize the value of human performance improvement as a core business strategy and assist organizations institute these principles into daily business practice to move the organization from potential to results. Elena may be reached at elena@exemplaryperformance.com.

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by Brian Desautels, CPT

This article series is designed to increase the visibility of the workplace impact that CPTs are making. These collected stories are meant to provide a showcase that you may share with your clients.

Performance Issue
The problem was a situation where relationships within a team and the senior management of a major department of local government appeared “to have irretrievably broken down.” The initial brief was to restore working relationships and avert a possible claim being made against the County Borough Council at an Industrial Tribunal for effectively dismissing them by making it impossible to carry out their job, which is known as constructive dismissal.

This County Borough Council was in the midst of a major restructuring program with cost savings as one of the key criteria. The existing structure was based on two central departments and seven service departments with an overall total of 7,000 employees.

The situation, intensified by the general unrest caused by the impending changes and perceived reduction in service levels within one of the service departments, had deteriorated to such an extent that an emotional outburst from the senior manager directed at a team member resulted in a formal complaint of bullying and harassment being registered. The outcome was the suspension of the senior manager with a potential Industrial Tribunal pending. The impact on lost productivity and low morale within the department was dramatic!

Performance Analysis
The first vital step was to determine the underlying causes of this incident prior to designing the most effective interventions. It was proposed that a staged approach following HPT standards and CPT principles would lead to the best solution:

• Specification and confirmation of the range of existing performance issues
• A systematic, comprehensive, and objective view of the conflict impasse being experienced
• Partnering relationship established within the County Borough Council
• Identification and confirmation of root causes
• Identification of appropriate CPT applications with design and development of interventions to address the core issues
• Ensuring an effective solution with measurable results within the parameters of an ongoing re-structuring program

Research Phase
Stage 1: One-to-One Sessions

Audience:

• Senior manager
• Team member involved in the actual recorded incident
• Departmental and deputy departmental managers

Purpose: Gather employees’ perceptions of:

• Recent events
• Involvement in the work processes and concerns about the future
• Actions that might resolve the conflict
• Restoring severed relationships and focusing on better ways of working together in the future

Research findings:

• Phase 1 of the restructuring had already commenced
• No further recruitment was allowed, which required services to be supplied without a key functional role being filled, causing excessive workloads
• Assigned administration and secretarial support had been changed to a pool of shared resources
• Shared resources caused operational problems
• Incident that resulted in the suspension of the senior manager was caused by lack of resources, frustration in lack of consultation, and the resulting breakdown in communication

Stage 2: Review of Research
The uncovered problem was fundamentally that the work environment, including processes and resources, was not supportive of enabling performers to achieve the desired results in an environment where the “goal posts” kept changing.

Key focus was on actions to the following questions:

1. What accomplishments are you trying to achieve?
2. What resources and processes need to be in place to reach these objectives?
3. What roles and responsibilities and decision-making parameters are in place?
4. What interactions internally and externally take place?
5. How were people responding to the challenges of their changing environment?

All action steps would be identified, as a team, through a facilitated “Team Away Day” meeting to explore key areas:

• The way work was organized
• The way people interacted with each other

Stage 3: Team Away Day
The agenda for the day was developed from data of the current work processes and performance environment of the accused performer and the team (i.e., expectations, resources or tools, feedback and consequences, relationships and inter-dependencies). Specific areas discussed on the Team Away Day included:

• Collective and objective graphic view of the “what is” of the interdependent work processes in the focus department. A process map was drawn up of the services currently provided by the department
• Impacted roles and responsibilities
• Focus on specialized team functions

The team spilt into sub-teams:

• Customer Information: handling all incoming Trading Standards issues
• Licensing: granting and issuing licenses for taxes, alcohol sales, entertainment premises, etc.
• Trading Standards Officers, Retail and Food Premises: ensuring compliance with hygiene and food labeling requirements
• Trading Standards Officers: handling all other key trading activities within the community
• Prosecution: Preparation of records and investigation results

Degrees of Change Exercise
Each sub-team worked together to clearly define what services were currently provided under the headings of:

• Mandatory: current legislation requirements
• Service-level agreements with external customers
• Ethical obligations to the community as a whole
• Historical: services supplied due to established custom and practice
• New ideas for improvements

Risk analysis, a comparison between:

• Benefits of continuing each service
• Risks involved in reducing or discontinuing each service

Cross-Awareness: Each sub-team visited each other’s area to expand their awareness of current issues and challenges.

Presentations were made at the end of the Team Away Day to the departmental manager and deputy departmental manager.

Stage 4: The “Way Forward” Plan
Key issues identified:

• Misunderstanding regarding the financial workings and mandatory legal responsibilities of the trading standards department:
  • Revenue source for the issuing of licenses was about to be transferred to another department. This would mean the trading standards department would then only be viewed as a cost to the organization
  • Costing for legal representation was outside of the cost control of the trading standards department
  • Legal implications surrounding the decisions not being fully appreciated
• Premises for the storage of confidential records under the Data Protection Act would need to be provided to avoid contravening the legal requirements

Performance Solution
The client has confirmed that the following results have been achieved:

• Removing conflict through a full appreciation of each other’s intent and contribution to the department’s provision of services to the community
• Reviewing current ways of working allowing an evaluation of current roles and responsibilities
• Evaluation of ideas for new ways of working together
• Submission of a well-thought-out and constructive proposal identifying methods and areas for change
• Focus achieved on moving the department forward to face the need for change within working practices

Organizational Results

• Avoided an Industrial Tribunal, thereby avoiding:
  • Indirect costs: Preparation time of HR, witnesses, senior management
  • Direct settlement costs estimated at £100,000, if successful
• Retention of key skills and expertise of those within the department who may have left due to an uncomfortable and de-motivating work environment
• Established an ongoing format for reviewing the impact of organizational change

About the CPT: Christine Marsh, CPT, is a principal at Prime Objectives. She may be reached at CMarsh@primeobjectives.com.

To submit a CPT story, contact Brian Desautels at briandes@jb2dPerformance.com.

Brian Desautels, CPT, is a past ISPI Board Director and Society Treasurer, 2000 ISPI Conference Chair, and co-founder of the Seattle chapter of ISPI. He is a former Sr. HR Manager for Microsoft Corporation and is currently the Managing Partner of JB2D Performance, a Seattle-based consulting firm which applies performance technology strategies to human resource management.

by Marilyn Spatz, CPT, ISPI Director

Committee emails, conference calls, proposals, budget requests, reports, and numerous other activities are happening behind the scenes of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI). Global emails travel between committee members, ISPI Board members, and ISPI staff. Do you know anyone who has volunteered to be on a committee? Do you know that there are dozens of opportunities to volunteer your time and professional skills to better our Society?

Curious? I went to the ISPI website at www.ispi.org to see if I could find out the names of standing committees. With a click on “About ISPI & Membership” in the left navigation bar, I found another link to “Committees.” Wow! I found the names of 11 standing committees and their respective chairperson(s). Each committee has a charter that explains its purpose, goals, and an idea about their value to you, the ISPI member and prospective member. These committees have short-term subcommittees that review conference proposals, award applications, research grant proposals, and numerous other tasks. Get acquainted with a committee by emailing the chairperson and indicating your interest. Committee chairpersons recruit throughout the year for new committee members, who will take responsibility in April 2006.

The fall spotlight is on the Nominations Committee. Committee members follow a very systematic process to review nominee applications against the position criteria. The committee charter is:

To seek qualified candidates for the Society’s elected offices, involving as many members as possible in the process. The Committee will consider the largest possible number of qualified candidates, and will evaluate their qualifications.

Tough work? Yes. In addition to reviewing applications and evaluating each nominee’s experience and skills against the criteria, there are phone calls to references, conference calls, and reports to write. The slate of candidates that the ISPI membership will vote on in January is a result of hours of volunteer time between September and November of this year.

Thank you to the Nominations Committee for their dedication and time to present a slate of qualified candidates that can lead our Society.

In summary, I want to thank and praise every ISPI member who has worked on a committee, subcommittee, or task force. My fellow ISPI Board members and I appreciate your dedication to continuing the rich tradition of volunteering to achieve business and organizational goals for our strong professional community in ISPI. We have a long history of dedicated volunteers who keep the Society looking to the future, achieving annual goals, and supporting the administrative structure that allows vision and growth.

Judith Hale, PhD, author of The Performance Consultant’s Fieldbook, Performance-Based Certification, Performance-Based Evaluation, and Performance-Based Management, has been a consultant to management in the public and private sectors for over 25 years. She specializes in needs assessments, certification programs, evaluation protocols, and the implementation of major interventions. She is an ISPI past president and award winner for her work. She has successfully and effectively applied the tools cited with her clients. Judy may be reached at Haleassoci@aol.com.

Regular readers of this column might be starting to see a pattern here. My scholarly family tree began with B.F. Skinner, my professor at Harvard, and then B.H. Barrett, Ogden Lindsley, Eric Haughton, and Tom Gilbert. These people were mutual friends and colleagues, and, I’m glad to say, handed down quite a bit about behavior science and its applications to me.

This month I want to talk a bit about what Gilbert called “instruments” in his Behavior Engineering Model, or what we call “Box 2—Tools and Resources” in our “Six Boxes” rendition of Gilbert’s original thinking. While recent decades have seen quite a few contributions to our understanding of how best to match environments to performance, one of the least known goes back to research conducted by some of Skinner’s students and colleagues in the laboratory.

A big challenge in early behavior science laboratories that studied the learning of humans, lower primates, and other species was to design a manipulandum or operandum—a device that a learner could operate repeatedly over relatively long periods of time to make responses, sometimes at very high rates (e.g., above 60 per minute), without fatigue. You had to build a manipulandum for each species, because species differ in their performance capabilities and requirements. For rats, the traditional rat lever worked best because, as we discussed in the last issue of PerformanceXpress, the rat could operate it in a number of ways, reliably and without tiring. Pigeon keys were completely different: little plastic disks that the pigeon could peck thousands of times to produce consequences and demonstrate discrimination without damaging either its beak or the device. Researchers built and “calibrated” all kinds of different devices for learners to use, and for human learners it was perhaps an even greater challenge.

Ogden Lindsley, who began the field of human operant conditioning with Skinner at Harvard Medical School, designed a number of ways for humans to record their responses. The most famous came to be known as the “Lindsley Manipulandum” (see Figure 1) and was designed so that people could either push or pull it, grasp it firmly or use the palm of the hand (to push). Lindsley designed and redesigned the device until performance data showed that people could use this response-maker for long periods of time, without any drift in their rates of response and without doing damage to themselves or the equipment. Lindsley devised a number of other response mechanisms, including floor mats to measure walking, rocking chairs with microswitches to record movement, panels to press, and even voice-operated switches.

Figure 1. Lindsley Manipulandum.

While this might seem esoteric for those of us involved in the practice of Human Performance Technology (HPT) today, it is both conceptually and historically relevant. As Gilbert, Skinner, and Lindsley shared discoveries in programmed instruction and human learning during Gilbert’s year at Harvard, the challenge of building environments to suit the behavior of performers was surely part of the discussion. Gilbert’s recognition that we must take environmental variables beyond antecedents and consequences into account, reflected in the second cell of his Behavior Engineering Model, certainly has a connection to the calibration of laboratory learning environments. Just as we can trace the link between switch closures in basic research labs and accomplishments in Gilbert’s thinking, we can also trace his expanded recognition of environmental variables in part to design of performance environments by basic researchers.

Since the early days of HPT, our appreciation of environmental enablers of performance has accelerated, including ergonomics, job design, and process management. But it’s very interesting to reflect on the fundamental insight provided from those early researchers that the ability of the individual performer to respond efficiently and effectively depends a great deal on the “instruments” or tools and resources—the environment and response interfaces that management provides.

Reference
Gilbert, T.F. (1996). Human competence: Engineering worthy performance. Silver Spring, MD: International Society for Performance Improvement.

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. Join the nearly 1,000 CPTs who have received this designation worldwide. The deadline to submit your application to ISPI is November 15, 2005. If not received by this deadline, it will be held until the next processing deadline of June 15, 2006. Visit www.certifiedpt.org for more information on becoming a CPT and to download the application.

Want to Learn More?
On August 31, 2005, ISPI Director of Certification Roger Chevalier presented a webinar on the Standards of Performance Technology and Certification for the Armed Forces Chapter. This 40-minute presentation may be accessed on the www.certifiedpt.org website by clicking here. The audio portion takes about 2¹/₂ minutes to download, using a DSL connection. You may also download the PowerPoint file to follow along as you listen to the presentation.

In the northern hemisphere, fall is in full force. As the leaves change and descend…er…fall to Earth, we grab our rakes. This month, we also rake the Internet to find some websites to help improve performance for all people.

Performance technologists find many challenges as workplaces adapt to people with different abilities and capabilities. In 2002, U.S. President George W. Bush proclaimed October as National Disability Employment Awareness Month, giving all of us the opportunity to reflect upon the achievements and barriers that people with disabilities face in the workplace. This month, we will look at some websites that provide resources for people striving to improve work settings for all people. Including paragliders.

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.

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

E-Klatch
Cutting-edge research continues to examine factors that affect people with disabilities. To access current interdisciplinary centers in the United States that conduct research in this area, visit the The Association of University Centers on Disabilities. Among various resources, you can access a comprehensive Disabilities Dictionary that lists disability terms, organizations, and more. The site also offers links to government resources for Hurricane Katrina survivors, a listserv of The National Training Directors’ Council (NTDC), job listings, research funding opportunities, and more. You can access the National Information and Reporting System (NIRS), which lists projects and products of benefit to people with disabilities—a recent keyword search on “performance improvement” (no quotation marks) found 38 projects. There is even an official NIRS song, which prompts I-Spy to wonder what would be ISPI’s official song? Email I-Spy your ideas!

HPT@work
In our modern workplaces, one common malady that can lead to disabilities is typing injuries. Resources and information to address this issue can be found at the Typing Injury FAQ, “an educational site, provided by the CTD Resource Network, Inc.” that focuses on Repetitive Stress Injuries. You can access an extensive list of articles (including A Unique Approach to Workforce Wellness by John Schlyer, CPE, an interesting piece that links lean manufacturing to individual wellness), as well as respond to their Call for Articles. Also, we suggest a visit to their comprehensive listing of international organizations, with links as varied as the World Health Organization, Sweden’s National Institute for Working Life, the Job Accommodation Network, and the National Association of Myofascial Trigger Point Therapists. The site also offers information on diverse products, from furniture to software, and includes some pictures related to proper posture and assistive devices. Learn to type ergonomically and you can surf the web for a long time.

I-Candy
Fencing. Tennis. Waterskiing. Disabled athletes compete in these sports and many more. For a view of exciting (and inspirational) action shots from the Athens 2004 Paralympics, visit the Bogetti-Smith Gallery photos on the WheelPower website of Kelly Smith. I-Spy found this link at the “Sports & Recreation” section of AllAbilities.com: Disability Links for People of All Abilities. Of the many links on this site, you can access Flyability, a British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association Disability Initiative, where you can learn more about the Flyability Paragliding Wheelchair.

So until next time, strive to always perform to the best of your ability, adapt your work to prevent injuries, and “cyber-glide” safely!

I-Spy continues to advocate for a day, week, or month in honor of HPT and our excellent profession. Please send your suggestions to tp@toddpacker.com, and we’ll share some ideas in a future column.

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

by Carmen Taran, CPT, EdD

As increasing e-learning offerings are part of business, government, and academic institutions, more professionals with solid e-learning design and implementation skills are needed to ensure the national and international competitiveness of our organizations. The purpose of the book titled Standalone WBT—How to Produce Effective, Learner-controlled Web-based Training (WBT) is to provide guidelines and standards for producing effective standalone online instruction.

The originality of the book springs from the fact that, currently, there are not many printed, research-based resources that narrow down the field of e-learning to specific components so that such a complex concept becomes manageable to understand, design, develop, and implement.

A quick search of books related specifically to web-based training performed on www.amazon.com produces few results. Descriptions of the books included in this list demonstrate that the majority of materials published on the topic of WBT lack one or several of these benefits:

• Sharp focus. Most books related to WBT are too generic and often overwhelm readers by addressing features and applications of a variety of WBT methods (e.g., synchronous and asynchronous WBT). Standalone WBT addresses only the production of standalone WBT, which involves only the student and the computer, without any other educational agents. Consequently, readers know exactly what to expect from Standalone WBT and are not overwhelmed by information that they either do not need or for which they are not prepared.
• Balance theory and practice. Most current books on WBT rely either on explaining abbreviated instructional theories and models or on providing tips and tricks on how to produce WBT without a theoretical foundation. Standalone WBT offers a good equilibrium between theories in education, psychology, communication, and instructional design, and it provides practical examples, extracted from real-life situations.
• Balance technology and design. Due to the fact that technology is so ephemeral, books that offer “how-to” guidelines for producing self-paced WBT should not focus heavily on what software applications or hardware to use to create a particular online training product. The focus should be on solid instructional design that is fluid enough to adjust to whatever technology fits designers’ skills and available resources and learners’ ability to access the training. Standalone WBT has a sharp focus on steady design versus shifting technology.
• Real examples. Most authors who publish WBT-related books have difficulty in acquiring the necessary approval for including real-life examples in their materials. Because the author of Standalone WBT works within a corporation that relies heavily on WBT and has collaborated with many WBT vendors, it was easier to obtain approval for offering readers real-life examples of WBT products. This feature contributes to the credibility of Standalone WBT.

In addition, Standalone WBT presents a balanced combination of serious content and humorous, anecdotal elements. Readers are informed but also entertained.

The book was submitted for an ISPI award based on the author’s intent to share with HR practitioners practical guidelines for producing effective WBT, implicitly responding to the needs of a speed-maddened, budget-restrictive world, in which it has become increasingly difficult to align training schedules and make strict time commitments. The book takes into consideration economic, environmental, financial, and instructional factors and aims to help designers produce quality online training.

One of the most significant accomplishments achieved through the publication of this book is that SBC Communications, Inc., the second largest telecommunications company in the nation, has purchased the book to be used as part of their instructional designers’ mandatory certification path. Here are a few testimonials offered by designers after reading Standalone WBT:

“I am so impressed with the Standalone WBT book. I see this as a very practical resource that will be helpful to all of us instructional designers as we embark on the journey of developing more online training. The book contains a lot of practical guidelines that I look forward to including in my applications.”

“...[T]he book will serve as a valuable resource to instructional designers and programmers alike. This resource is based on solid instructional design principles and offers practical guidelines and numerous examples of how to effectively design, develop and deliver training online.”

This book is intended for training managers, instructional designers, and course developers, as well as any adult educator who has experience developing conventional classroom training. Others who might benefit from this book are technical writers, usability testers, and graphic artists who work within a training organization. If you are interested in purchasing this book, please click here.

To further enhance the value of the award and to ensure greater exposure of the program throughout the Society’s membership and the profession, the International Society for Performance Improvement asked the 2005 Awards of Excellence recipients to contribute an article to PerformanceXpress highlighting their projects.

A profound shift is taking place in the way people communicate and express themselves. A new concept of language and what it means to be literate is evolving. The new form of expression is multi-modal, incorporating visual and aural with textual elements. Its immediacy itself is an element. Technology is a key enabler, allowing for sophisticated use of images, video, sound, and text all at once.

I am a founding member of a small professional association of graphic facilitators and recorders (the writing and drawing I do on the wall to record sessions at the ISPI Annual Conference). We are called IFVP, the International Forum of Visual Practitioners. We would like to make the ISPI membership aware of the opportunity to attend a really unique event. At the IFVP 10th Annual Conference on October 21-23, we will be addressing human and organizational learning, particularly through (but not limited to) the visual context. Since ISPI members do the work that we do, we all have a significant contribution to make to the inquiry. The conference program will engage all in a dialogue and exploration of 21^st-century literacy, and what that means going forward, at the social as well as organizational, process, and individual level.

A few highlights include:

• Bob Horn, ISPI’s 2004 Thomas F. Gilbert Distinguished Professional Achievement Award honoree, will graphically facilitate and map the “ill-structured” or wicked problem of social messes: complex; ambiguous; tightly interconnected; economic, social, and political; always seen differently from different worldviews; and full of value conflicts. Visual maps increase our ability to understand and tackle wicked problems.
• David Sibbet, one of the three inventors of graphic facilitation, will lead a discussion on the educational ramifications of the new literacy. David facilitated the 21^st Century Literacy Summit sponsored by Adobe Systems, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, and the New Media Consortium this past April.
• Mike Mills, inventor of Apple’s QuickTime software, will show how he uses rapid visualization to facilitate software development. There’s a lot of storytelling to be done, conjuring up how people will interact with software that hasn’t yet been invented. (Mike works visually, but has never seen graphic recording done.) Mike will list ideas he’d like to have icons for, and we’ll generate some on the spot.
• Vivian Wright, an internal strategy and organization consultant at Hewlett-Packard, will model a live virtual meeting demonstrating some simple, accessible techniques to combine graphic tools and group process that bring a human touch to virtual meetings. Conference attendees will participate.

I hope you can join us for this exciting event! If you have any questions about the program, the atmosphere, the location, or the cost, I will be happy to respond.

Lynn Kearny, CPT, has been an ISPI member since 1980, and serves on the Conference Committee for IFVP and is a Charter member of IFVP. She may be reached at lkearny@sprintmail.com.

The International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) has three special honorary awards that recognize outstanding individuals and organizations for their significant contributions to human performance technology and to the Society itself. The awards are the Thomas F. Gilbert Distinguished Professional Achievement Award, the Distinguished Service Award, and the Honorary Life Member Award. As done in the past, the membership is asked to submit names of qualified individuals for consideration for the Distinguished Service Award. If you are interested in nominating an ISPI member, please email the following information to april@ispi.org:

• Name of award
• Name, telephone number, and email of nominee
• Name and telephone number of nominator
• Brief supporting information for the nominee

This year’s recipients were Thomas F. Gilbert Distinguished Professional Achievement Award: William R. Daniels, and the Distinguished Service Award: Christine Marsh. The Honorary Life Member was not awarded in 2005. The deadline to receive nominations is November 18, 2005. For more detailed information on the guidelines used for selecting individuals to receive these awards, visit www.ispi.org or click here.

The International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) annually recognizes people, products, innovations, and organizations that represent excellence in the field of instructional and Human Performance Technology (HPT). Submissions receiving the “stamp of approval” in this criterion-based awards program receive acknowledgment and recognition by their peers throughout the year and at a special awards presentation held during ISPI’s Annual International Performance Improvement Conference in Dallas, Texas, in 2006. Click here for more information and to submit your 2006 entry application. Entry deadline is October 14, 2005.

Training Magazine (July 2005) reviewer Janice Love cites Beyond the Myths and Magic of Mentoring as one of her five favorite books!

“For ‘Most Referred to Other People,’ the award goes to Beyond the Myths and Magic of Mentoring (Jossey-Bass, 2001) by Margo Murray. I should get some kind of commission for referring this book to so many associates. Not only have I mentioned it individually, I’ve even broadcast my admiration for it, when I taught a program on mentoring that was broadcast to Department of Energy sites throughout the United States.”

To submit your testimonial, send an email to membership@ispi.org and include your full name, title, company, city, and state. If you’d like to include a photo of yourself, please attach a color photo to the email (preferably JPG format). Your testimonial and photo will be posted on the ISPI website. For more information or questions, contact Francis George at 301.587.8570, ext. 110.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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