First Things Fast

A Handbook for Performance Analysis

Allison Rossett

• Publisher: Pfeiffer
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780787988487
• eBook ISBN: 9780470478134
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

An Essential Knowledge Resource

THE WORLD OF LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE has changed significantly since the first edition of First Things Fast was published more than a decade ago. This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the best-selling classic recognizes a world chock-full of technology, economic strains, and opportunities. How do learning and performance professionals plan in this shifting context? How do they take advantage of new human and Internet-based resources? How do they bring their recommendations forward and add more value, no matter where they work? These questions are addressed throughout this new edition.

This important resource is a practical guide that is filled with job aids, design templates, and examples offering step-by-step guidance to the basics of performance analysis.

This new edition includes:

• New questions and templates that reflect the shift of learning and support from the classroom to the workplace, and the blends that provide learning and support in both environments
• Fresh approaches for using wikis, blogs, and online surveys to gather information
• Innovative ideas for tapping into the power of social networking and the possibilities presented for analysts
• Information on the critical link between analysis and evaluation and new guidelines for both activities
• A wealth of new illustrative case examples
• Insightful commentaries from successful leaders in the field who explain how they use analysis to advance individual and organizational strategy

"Allison Rossett combines thought leadership for the profession with practical guidance. This book, the second edition of a classic in the field, is filled with proven practices and ready-to-use tools making this a resource you'll use frequently."
DANA GAINES ROBINSON, COAUTHOR, PERFORMANCE CONSULTING AND STRATEGIC BUSINESS PARTNER

"What I appreciate about this book is that it is a straightforward, practical guide to planning, and it embraces new technology and the convergence of learning and work."
NANCY J. LEWIS, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER, ITT CORPORATION

1

Introduction

Nancy Lewis, then IBM vice president for sales and on demand learning and now the executive in charge of learning for ITT, contributed to the LearningTown blog on April 11, 2008:

Business leaders know that the rate of information change is accelerating, growing faster than our ability to consume it. The result being that we will all have skill gaps, all the time, and that skill gaps will be a constant state of life in the future. We also know that our roles are becoming as complex as the knowledge we work with. There will never be enough time to learn everything we need to learn. There is such a consistent and rapid churn of the skills and knowledge required to maintain job performance that learning can no longer be provided as a set of events. This is the new challenge for learning: enabling people to capitalize on new technologies, discoveries and business insights, to be first to the marketplace with new solutions that exceed our clients’ needs and expectations. At the heart, therefore, the essence of any company’s ability to adapt and grow is its ability to learn. And that involves new ways of thinking about an approach to learning.

What Lewis is touting is not computers, although technology, of course, plays a starring role in the delivery of learning and support. Lewis’s focus is learning in juxtaposition with the work and workplace: “We looked at where learning actually takes place most of the time. It’s in the workplace, not in the classroom. We learn naturally on the job. We learn by doing, by solving problems. There will always be a need for formal training, but it will likely be much more in direct support of the capabilities that cannot be learned in the workplace.”

Placing learning and references closer to the work is brilliant, except when it is the wrong learning or references. Executives favor such an approach, especially in harsh economic times. Employees reject programs that are extraneous, bloated, or obsolete. That’s true in the classroom and online. The big difference is the instructor, present for face-to-face experiences. Instructors typically fix instruction when it is not right. An instructor adds an example to make it more relevant. Another reminds the employee of all that he already knows. Yet another instructor provides an opportunity to tackle a problem that is within the student’s abilities, to ensure a success experience. And another links the example to the concept, when the students’ faces are blank. Finally, a savvy instructor would recognize when a class, as now written, ignores a critical new product or geopolitical reality. She makes fixes to ensure that the class is timely.

When we diminish instructor centrality in favor of on-demand and workplace-based resources and experiences, more responsibility falls on us. We must be certain about the resonance of our programs. What do our people need? What is top priority? What is already known? For what do they clamor? What will add value? What must they know by heart? What can they seek as they need it? It is performance analysis that answers these questions.

In April 2008, Delta and Northwest Airlines announced their intentions to merge. A Delta learning leader, in a personal email that very morning, shared feelings about the merger. She expressed enthusiasm for it, and closed by remarking that she now needs to get her arms around what Northwest learning is all about and what their people require. She has to figure out how to make this merger work at 550 mph. How does she gain insight into their people, challenges, and programs? What should she do first? What next? And how does she engage colleagues in the process, so that her ideas are not just Delta ideas or habits? It is performance analysis that answers her questions.

A former student provided another example. After a dozen years in training and development in financial services, he reports that he is now, finally, getting more control over the “juicy” projects. “I want to use technology to meet the needs of the far-flung IT community. When their executive asked me to look for ways to improve awareness about system security, I immediately thought about Second Life.” Why was Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) such a natural here? I asked. He had reasons that began to bring me around, such as the interest the approach would generate in a skeptical audience and the immersive and vivid nature of the experience. But how would he direct their experiences on his corporate island? How would he rivet their attention, since other even “juicier” opportunities lurked on nearby islands? Given all that could be done, how would he decide what they see, tackle, and do? It is performance analysis that answers his questions.

You could be at IBM or Delta, or even contemplating the design of your corporate island in Second Life. Perhaps your organization is rolling out a new product. Or maybe you are tasked with getting more value from the current learning management system or with squeezing cost out of the current enterprise. Or consider the executive who wants assurance that what his people are studying in class will transfer to the manufacturing floor. Then there is the sales leader who notes that great things are going on across the world and laments that the rest of the salesforce rarely profits from these breakthroughs. Your job is to embrace these requirements as opportunities and to customize programs to ensure performance and results. How do you make that happen? No surprise. The answer is performance analysis.

Where once human resources and training professionals enjoyed a niche defined by familiar activities, such as offering classes or facilitating meetings, now there are urgent expectations about results, speed to competence, benefits and efficiencies from technologies, and eagerness to distribute smarts everywhere, accessible where and when needed.

These expectations define us by customers and causes, not by history, habit, or job title. They lead to tailored services. They lead to data and perceptions gathered from associates, managers, experts, leaders, and benchmarking groups. They lead to solutions enlightened by causes and drivers. They lead to uncovering data in unexpected places, including blogs and wikis. They lead to cobbling together solution systems from across the organization, including assets and experiences that compel attention over time and geography.

The basis for all of this is performance analysis. An effective performance analysis delivers the information and support you need to chart a fresh, tailored approach.

Jeanne Strayer never underestimates the value of a training intervention. With her background as a teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL), she understands the importance of a structured curriculum to address a specific knowledge deficit. But what she found upon entering the business world was that training could just as easily be the wrong solution to a problem. Whether working as an independent consultant or an in-house instructional designer, Jeanne expanded her repertoire of skills “to include other interventions to solve performance problems.”

In her current position as a partner with the Six Degrees Company, Jeanne finds that even repeat clients often think first of training as the solution to a problem, rather than imagine other possible solutions. To address this illogical leap, Jeanne uses one of several techniques to get a client to slow down, step back, and acknowledge the need for some good, old-fashioned analysis.

1. Ask the right questions in order to lead clients to discover the value of analysis. Performance consultants have a need and a knack for asking questions about a problem that “bring to light” the unknowns and uncertainties of a situation. Asking those questions together with the client helps the client see the value of doing analysis. Jeanne had a client who wanted to reach a very large target audience of real estate agents, numbering in the thousands. The client wanted an e-learning product to lead the agents to use a new software product. Jeanne said to the client, “Well, let’s see. You say the agents need online training on the new software system, but they never used point-and-click training offered in the past. What makes you think it will be different this time? Why do you think they didn’t use it last time? Do they not understand how to do it? Or do they not see the value in the training?” Asking questions can create an “Aha!” moment so that clients see the value of investigating further before investing in a solution.

2. Demonstrate that budgets are easier to develop after analysis. Sometimes the scope of a project is so big that it’s hard to place an actual dollar figure on a solution without some serious initial analysis. In the situation above, the client thought that e-learning was the best way to reach the many real estate agents. After a few questions, Jeanne discovered that the problems were due to motivation, marketing, and implementation—in addition to training. Once the client accepted those drivers, it was clear that further analysis was needed to scope the project and to put some budget numbers together. Jeanne used data to show that a live event was the best way to market the new software. With this information, the client was able to budget for the cost of x number of events in a targeted geographic area, as well as the marketing campaign to promote the live events.

3. Use the Gilbert model to de-emphasize training. The Gilbert Behavior Engineering Model, created by Thomas Gilbert, classifies performance problems into one of six categories: information, resources, incentives, knowledge, capacity, and motivation. Jeanne uses this model as a way for project leaders to think about the performance problem. She then asks, “Before committing project dollars to a training program, doesn’t it make sense to see if any of these other factors are at work so that we can use those to leverage performance?”

Jeanne Strayer is a partner with the Six Degrees Company, a firm specializing in sales strategy, marketing, and performance improvement. She holds an MA in educational technology from San Diego State University, and a Certified Performance Technologist credential through the International Society for Performance Improvement. You can reach Jeanne at [email protected].

Is This Book for You?

This book is for you if you’ve found yourself thinking or saying,

I don’t know where to start.

I don’t know what to do.

I must get it right or I fear they won’t use it.

What is performance analysis?

Why should I spend time on performance analysis, when my clients want ACTION?

What would competence look like, really look like?

A certain amount of analysis is critical, I guess. OK, what’s the minimum?

They’ve reorganized, and now I’m in this unit called “client relationships,” and we’re supposed to be doing performance consulting. What should we do? How might analysis help here?

How do I avoid analysis-paralysis?

How do I get a better fix on what to do first, second, and next?

It’s all about technology around here now. How does the shift to technology and independent learning influence the way we plan?

We have online communities, wikis, blogs . . . should I use them in my analysis? How would I do that?

This analysis is just a small part of my job. I don’t have time for all of this analysis. What’s the least I can do and still derive value?

Whom do I ask? What do I ask?

What’s analysis got to do with evaluation?

My customer says she knows what she needs and that it’s not analysis. How can I make a case with her for study prior to action?

They want some courses, and one customer wants scenario-based e-learning. But I have my doubts about whether an isolated course, in the classroom or through high technology, is going to solve this problem. How can I make them see this?

The challenges are numerous: a world economic crisis; skepticism from clients; time pressures; the strength of habits; unfamiliar roles in changing organizations; cultural, language, and time zone differences; uneven technology platforms; and expectations regarding cost recovery and collaborations across units. Whereas the traditional roles of human resources and training were functional, tactical, and blissfully familiar, this new world of performance analysis, consultation services, and solution systems is more fluid and strategic. It demands more of you. The changes won’t be easy.

That paragraph ends the sympathy. From here on we talk about how to think about and succeed in these new roles and services, and we’ll focus on analysis as the strategy to enable you to do just that.

This book is written for human resources and training professionals who are eager to choose solutions based on the situation, not on habits and inclinations; who are interested in analysis prior to action; who seek to consult with line organizations to establish field-based cases for their recommendations; and who are operating under time constraints. Many are called trainers by their organizations. Some are internal or external organizational developers and process reengineers. Many call themselves instructional designers or performance consultants or even performance technologists. Some have another position entirely, but find themselves tasked with or attracted to solving problems. Still others are human resources generalists. What all share is a desire to shift from predetermined activities and events to consultation and customized solutions. They are working to establish partnerships. Their efforts begin with performance analysis.

Performance Analysis and Needs Assessment?

In the past I’ve written about needs assessment in a way that defines it as a large, overarching concept that is arguably synonymous with good human resources planning. Although I still hold by that definition, I was, I fear, overly optimistic about the welcome that such a demanding process would receive in the field. As practical experience and numerous studies of practice have shown, my own included, needs assessment is honored more in theory than in practice. What to do? Do we abandon this critical planning simply because so many report that they fail to do much of it? I don’t think so.

I’m no longer convinced it is helpful to define needs assessment so broadly, because when you do, a commitment to needs assessment will necessitate the expenditure of significant resources up front. Professionals run up against a wall of resistance when they attempt to gather large quantities of information from many sources at the get-go. Instead, I’m proposing that we reduce the daunting size ...

Table of contents

• Praise
• About Pfeiffer
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• PREFACE
• Acknowledgements
• THE AUTHOR
• Chapter 1 - Introduction
• Chapter 2 - What Can We Do First and Fast?
• Chapter 3 - Performance Analysis Basics
• Chapter 4 - Opportunities for Performance Analysis
• Chapter 5 - Putting the Speed in Performance Analysis
• Chapter 6 - Communicating to Gather Information and Support
• Chapter 7 - What Technology Contributes
• Chapter 8 - Finding Meaning, Communicating Results
• Chapter 9 - Tales from the Trenches
• Chapter 10 - Into the Future
• AFTERWORD
• RESOURCES FOR PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
• INDEX