PRINCIPLES OF PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY
Performance improvement professionals adhere to four principles in our work, often expressed as RSVP+:
R—Focus on results: Use our knowledge of the business to help clients link their performance improvement initiatives to business needs and goals, and initiate such projects by specifying what the end result is to be.
S—Take a system viewpoint: Consider all aspects of the organization’s performance system when we analyze a situation, including competing pressures, resource constraints, and near and long-term anticipated changes.
V—Add value: Produce results that make a difference, both in how we do the work and in what we produce.
P—Establish partnerships: Work with clients and other performance improvement professionals to share skills, knowledge, creativity, and successes to produce the intended results.
+—Remain solution-neutral: The + in RSVP+ reminds us that as ethical performance consultants we stay focused on the client’s needs/requirements and remain solution-neutral, recommending what is best for the client’s situation regardless of our solution preferences or personal expertise.
Using RSVP+
These principles can serve as valuable guides for performance consultants. For example, results are most often expressed in terms of profits or growth, such as increasing profit or growing market share by a specific percentage. It is important to link our results to critical business, process, and individual measures.
What is the system in the client organization you work with? Is it a series of functional silos? For initiatives to become part of the organization’s fabric, processes must be aligned across the system. Take a look at industry leaders, such as Hewlett Packard, where project teams from functions and locations around the world come together, often virtually (Friedman, 2007, p. 207).
What is the quality of the system? We know that a bad system is pervasive and will override the best performer’s efforts. The same bad system will overwhelm a good customer’s legitimate complaints, enabling resolution of the complaint but without changing the system (Rummler, 2004, p. xiii). Know the environment into which you plan to introduce change.
Partnerships are critical. When you look around your organization you will find lots of people trying to improve performance in their own areas. Consider the power of a broad group of stakeholders partnering for the same goals. Today, if an organization isn’t thinking horizontally, it is not innovating.
Organizations get what they measure, and they measure what is of value to them. Don Tosti recommends that we align our practices with the organization’s values (in conversation with Don Tosti).
And finally, RSVP makes a wonderful frame on which to construct an elevator speech to describe your work. Try creating several short statements that touch on each of the principles and see what you can build (Haig & Addison, 2007). See Chapter 8, Chart Your Course, for more on the elevator speech.
By thinking systemically, we are able to identify and work with all the linkages in organizations as we strive to improve performance (Addison & Haig, 2006, p. 39).
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