Foreword—Fundamentals of Performance Technology

What are the fundamentals? Fundamentals are the concepts and tools necessary for understanding how to improve workplace performance? Why do some people perform well and others poorly in the workplace? This book provides the answer: People do what they do because that is what they have learned in the workplace!

• If people loaf on the job, they have been taught to do so. How? Perhaps by supervisors or managers making confusing or contradictory demands, discouraging people who are diligently trying to do a good job. Perhaps by learning that doing a good job is ignored, whereas loafing is fun until the boss comes by and screams (and then goes away again). Or perhaps by learning that it is more fun to loaf with peers than to be punished by peers for working hard.
• If people “don't think” on the job, they have been taught not to. How? Perhaps by having their ideas and suggestions ignored. Perhaps by being punished for showing initiative, or asking tough but important questions, or for doing things better (but differently) than the boss wanted.
• If people engage in highly productive teamwork, they have been taught to do so. How? Perhaps by learning how to do work that has been designed for a team. Perhaps by taking part in on-the-job problem-solving teams. Perhaps by being trained in teamwork behaviors that are then supported on the job.

What is performance technology? This book provides an answer: It is “the systematic process of linking business goals and strategies with the workforce responsible for achieving the goals.” (The workforce includes everyone: a salesperson, a third-shift setup mechanic, the chief executive officer, the chief financial officer, the receptionist in the human resources department, and everyone else.) Performance technology is a technology for linking people to organizations in mutually beneficial ways. Performance technology is about supporting people's effort to:

• Learn how to perform competently.
• Perform competently.
• Learn how to perform even more competently in the future.

Performance technology is about making sure that the people side of the business works. What makes the financial side of the business work? People. What makes the technical side of the business work? People. Performance technology is about making organizations work by helping people work. Performance technology is about helping people work by creating organizations that support high levels of performance. Performance technology is about installing instructional systems and performance support systems. Performance technology is about establishing win-win relationships between organizations and people.

That's a lot. What is performance technology not about? It is not about a specific type of intervention (such as training, incentive systems, quality improvement, reengineering, cost reduction, or right sizing, and so forth). Performance technology is about improving human performance in the workplace; it is not about specific techniques for improving performance. Performance technology is about making systems work; it is not about making parts of systems work better (whether or not doing so actually helps the organization work better). Performance technology is about wholes, not parts.

The mission of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) states it clearly: “Improving human performance in systematic and reproducible ways.” Performance technology is not about changing light bulbs and hoping performance improves; it is about improving performance in a systematic and reproducible approach.

What is the performance technology approach? This book provides an answer: Practitioners of the field select the right tools for the job and evaluate progress to assure that the tools are doing the job. This book is organized around the flow of performance technology in action. The performance technology flow chart, as shown in many International Society for Performance Improvement publications, was generated a few years ago by Bill Deterline and Marc Rosenberg. It shows that one begins with a performance analysis to find gaps between what is happening now and what should be happening now or in the future. Cause analysis identifies the causes of deficient performance and, at the same time, what is necessary to achieve high levels of performance. After specifying desired performance and identifying the variables that support performance, the next step is to select and design an intervention that will enable people (and organizations) to perform at the levels specified. The next step is the one that takes the most time, resources, and ingenuity: implementing the intervention. Evaluation is the final step only in the flow chart—it is integrated competently. In other words, it shows people how to do performance improvement projects in systematic and reproducible ways! I wish a book like this had been written years ago.

Does the book enable readers to learn everything that they must learn to be highly competent performance technology professionals? No. Readers who use this book well will be the ones who already know a lot about human behavior in the workplace. Perhaps they are managers who have heard about and want to understand and use performance technology. Perhaps they are total quality management professionals looking for new ways to make total quality initiatives succeed a little more often. Perhaps they are human resource development professionals who want to get out of the training box. Perhaps they are graduate students in instructional design who want to make sure their designs add value. The book will be most valuable to people who know a lot about related matters, for example, some of the many interventions used in performance technology.

Does the book provide something that those new to performance technology would benefit by knowing? Yes. It is a handbook for doing performance technology. Stolovitch and Keeps' Handbook of Human Performance Technology (2nd ed., 1999) is a handbook about the field that is rich in material for doing. Darlene Van Tiem, James Moseley, and Joan Conway Dessinger have produced a handbook for doing performance technology. I think of them as companion volumes, each valuable in different ways.

Does this book provide anything for experienced professionals? Yes. It is the only book available that takes the reader through the whole performance technology process. It is a journey that experienced professionals take often and, with the help of this book, one they might travel more competently the next time out. It, like Langdon, Whiteside, and McKenna's Intervention Resource Guide: 50 Performance Improvement Tools (1999), shows many different interventions performance technology professionals can use. Even experienced professional tend to be competent in using only a few of the interventions and would benefit from learning more about the interventions to be used.

Is this book flawed in any way? Of course. It is flawed in the same way that Deterline and Rosenberg's marvelously useful flow chart is flawed. It shows a systematic process, but it doesn't show the performance technology practitioner how to think systematically. Does that flaw diminish the book's value? Not really. If a practitioner has learned to think systematically, the flow chart is an added tool. If the practitioner hasn't learned to think systematically, the flow chart, used often, will enable her or him to add value while learning why systemic thinking is so important.

Dale Brethower

Professor Emeritus, Psychology, Western Michigan University

Author of Performance Analysis and Performance-Based Instruction