Performance Architecture, both the concept and the model that forms the basis for this book, originated some years ago when Roger Addison, who is a great traveler, first saw a travel Access Guide. He was intrigued because the guide was organized as people actually travel—describing what they could see in a particular neighborhood in a city, for example, rather than by lists of attractions, restaurants, hotels, and the like. Roger visited The UnderstandingBusiness (TUB), the designers of the Access Guides, where he met Mark Johnson, then TUB president. TUB specialized in making information accessible through good design, and Roger saw that the way information is displayed contributes to performance improvement. Mark is an architect by training, and he and Roger had many conversations about design and its role in improving performance. In one discussion, they made the connection between performance and architecture. Putting the two together helped to refocus Roger on designing performance, rather than simply looking for gaps, and opened his thinking to include other disciplines, such as architecture and workplace design, in his performance improvement efforts.

Writing this book has helped us to recognize how much we have learned and has enabled us to integrate it into one big picture. Whenever we write about a subject, researching and reviewing material leads us to new insights and connections and updates information we have come to take for granted. Our exploration of new books and websites alone has been invaluable. The process also reminded us to view organizational politics more as a positive instrument rather than as a necessary evil. Finally, we recognize that in human performance technology (HPT) there is a less robust set of tools for working at the Organization Level than at the other levels. We hope this book will encourage others in our field to add much needed resources for this level.

It is quite possible that we would never have written this book without the special encouragement and support of Geary Rummler. Geary has known us for years, and we have used his materials in our work. He, in turn, knows our work, and encouraged us to get our ideas together in a book. Ultimately, he invited us to visit him in Tucson, Arizona (in July!), where he led us through the initial outline for this book and opened his treasury of tools and resources to us. We are very grateful.

Human performance technology and performance improvement have deep roots. We know that we build upon the work of many great thinkers, both from the past: B.F. Skinner, Lloyd Homme, Thomas Gilbert, George Geis, Bill Deterline, and many others; and from today: Dale Brethower, Clare Carey, Roger Chevalier, Bill Daniels, Judith Hale, Joe Harless, Paul Harmon, Stephanie Jackson, Roger Kaufman, Danny Langdon, Miki Lane, Robert Mager, Margo Murray, Ken Silber, Harold Stolovitch, Donald Tosti, Klaus Wittkuhn, Kathleen Whiteside, and so many more.

Our special thanks to colleagues, bosses, friends, and family who cheered us on as we researched and wrote: Dannie Anderson, Rick Battaglia, Michael Cullen, April Davis, Matthew Davis, Barbara Gough, Cress Kearny, Bryan Lawton, Walter Ratcliff, Josie Trujillo, the staff of ISPI, and the editorial team at Pfeiffer.