Human Performance Consulting

James S. Pepitone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781136397448
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

New rules require a new game plan. More than 80% of today's workforce comprises knowledge-and service-based workers, rendering obsolete the conventional understanding of organizational performance. New work roles require new managerial skills and methods. This innovative book shows how 'new human performance specialists' can mold and construct work situations that enhance performance, productivity, and profits. The methods go beyond individual improvement and show how to create and sustain work situations that foster high levels of performance. 'Human Performance Consulting' presents a comprehensive framework for designing and implementing highly effective, results-orientated programs that improve employee performance. It gives managers and human-performance professionals proven methods for boosting any organization's workforce productivity and operational performance - and without huge capital expenditures, high-profile programs, and major upheavals. James Pepitone describes the role of the internal performance consultant and explains how these individuals can add financial value to any organization by guiding human performance improvement. Case studies and examples give you a solid foundation for identifying and diagnosing performance problems. Step-by-step instructions supply guidelines for working with existing management to make skillful changes that will improve performance and add measurable value.

Part I

New Opportunities Within Organizations

Chapter 1

The Industrial Roots of Performance Improvement

The improvement of human work performance is not a new objective. For as long as people have been employed, managers have been trying to improve their performance. And the methods most managers use to try to improve employee performance are not new, either. The methods used today are essentially the same methods used more than a hundred years ago.

The industrial roots of today’s approach to improving employee performance, including the fundamental goals of work simplification and standardization, developed in situations that were dramatically different from those faced by businesses today. A hundred years ago, managers were dealing with inexperienced laborers whose work required meeting the intolerant needs of machines and machine-like processes. That’s a far cry from today’s situation.

To illustrate just how dramatic the changes have been during the past one hundred years, consider the following list of “major human resource developments in this century.” The list was compiled in a survey of labor economists in 1992 and is presented here in the order in which these developments originated [1].

Evolution of human work from machine-labor tasks to knowledge-based responsibilities through automation, standardization, simplification, etc.

Development of the social sciences, including sociology, psychology, behavioral science, education, economics, and many other disciplines.

Advances in instructional technology that enhanced human learning and enabled people to learn faster, more effectively, and more reliably than ever before.

Emergence of a comprehensive management technology (beginning notably with Peter Drucker’s book, The Practice of Management, published in 1954) to guide business management following World War II.

Cultural advancement of modern society, including great advances in education (e.g., the G.I. Bill and expanded public education), consumerism, technology, and conveniences.

Application of biological “systems theory” to provide a more accurate explanation of complex circumstances and the strategic effects of decision than the traditional cause-and-effect explanation.

Evolution of information technology and the introduction of personal computers.

Limits to resources and growth, which spawned a tremendous search for new products, new markets, new sources of labor, new sites for production, and new thinking in almost every aspect of business.

Competition at world-class standards, including best quality, speed, cost, convenience, and innovation.

Downsizing and the new “implied” employment contract that ceased to recognize loyalty as a feature of employment that employers valued.

Need for adaptive “learning” organizations that promoted innovation, risk-taking, empowerment, and participation in order to tap the knowledge and expertise of every employee.

Outright dominance in the workplace of knowledge and service workers—now exceeding 80 percent of all employment in developed economies—in place of production and logistics workers, forcing dramatic changes in the design and management of organizations.

In the face of these developments, and in recognition of the substantial changes they have brought to the nature of work and workers during this period, reflective managers and staff professionals will want to question their continuing widespread use of century-old methods in an effort to improve human work performance. It makes sense that if today’s organizations are to be their most successful, then performance improvement methods will need to suit the current nature of work and workers.

To better understand this need for fundamental change, we will begin the search for new performance improvement opportunities with a quick look back at how the current methods came to be.

LOOKING BACK

Prior to the 1700s, the kind of work performed by most people was determined most often by their circumstances at birth, and its design and performance were learned through a combination of observing a master and hands-on experience. Workers were less than eager to share their knowledge with outsiders because they wanted to preserve the economic value this knowledge provided. Crafts remained within families for generations, and apprentices were often sworn to secrecy.

In the early 1700s, this craft knowledge was first transformed into an easily transferred and applied technology—rules, principles, methods, and materials—to guide, improve, and regulate the practice of manual skills. The Encyclopédie, published in 1751, assembled the knowledge of most crafts known at the time, consequently allowing even nonapprentices to learn them. Putting technical knowledge into written form ultimately led to the establishment of agricultural, engineering, and medical schools, which taught concepts and procedures that defined and guided effective performance. Distinguished from schools whose purpose was to provide education in the liberal arts, these professional and trade schools taught people how to perform a particular kind of work.

Machine Organization

The Industrial Revolution introduced innovations that improved labor productivity and fueled an unprecedented economic expansion in Europe and the United States. The development of machine technology and steam-generated power led to a concentration of production in large-scale factories that required large amounts of capital, energy, and human labor. Many trades developed into industries, and most craft work was eventually replaced by machine labor. Machine technology simplified the human challenge in crafts and made it possible for people to easily learn a particular task or type of work, thus enabling companies to prepare a workforce of the size required for mass production.

The economic transformation that resulted from the Industrial Revolution established employment as the new way most people earned their livelihood. In 1780, approximately eighty percent of the U.S. adult population was self-employed. By 1880, only thirty-seven percent remained self-employed [2].

Machine technology was considered the greatest achievement of society at the turn of the twentieth century. The pursuit of machine-based capabilities soon influenced every aspect of people’s lives. They had to make adjustments to their routines in order to satisfy the needs of machines. People became the flexible resource, adapting to the inherent inflexibility of machines and the large production operations they required.

The organization and management of work soon followed the design of machines. Organizations were not established as ends in themselves but were created to keep machinery productive. In fact, the word organization is derived from the Greek word organon, meaning “a tool or instrument.” Therefore, it is understandable that organizations have been oriented around tasks, objectives, skills, plans, and goals, and that members have been expected to behave as if they were parts of machines—routinized, efficient, reliable, and predictable.

Early rules for organizing and managing work evolved from concepts pioneered by Frederick the Great, who ruled Prussia from 1740 to 1786. Frederick inherited an unruly mob for an army and set out to apply practices of Roman and sixteenth-century European armies along with concepts inspired by the mechanical inventions of his day. He set out to shape his army into a reliable and efficient war machine, introducing such concepts as ranks, regulations, task specialization, standardization of equipment, and training. The concepts that mechanized Frederick’s army were gradually transferred to industrial-age factories [3].

Classical Organization Theory

Henri Fayol (1841-1925), a Frenchman who owned a large coal mine, thought through organization design and developed the first rational approach to the organization of enterprise, which he called the functional principle [4]. Fayol was one of the early management theorists interested in the practical problems of management and sought to assemble the current knowledge about managing organizations. Drawing from military and engineering principles that were applied in successful factory operations, he was among the first to outline the best management thinking of the late 1800s in his fourteen management principles, represented in Table 1-1 [5].

Table 1-1
Fayol’s “Fourteen Management Principles”

Principle	Description
1. Division of Labor	To increase efficiency, workers should specialize in tasks for which they are best suited.
2. Authority	Managers should have authority, the right to issue orders. With authority comes responsibility for ensuring that the work is done.
3. Discipline	The organization should expect obedience from its employees, and in turn, employees should expect to be treated with dignity by their employers.
4. Unity of Command	Each employee should report to only one supervisor.
5. Unity of Direction	Each activity of an organization should have one leader and one plan.
6. Subordination of Personal Interests	Management must ensure that decisions are made from a rational standpoint and not solely to placate self-interested individuals or groups.
7. Remuneration	People should be paid in order to motivate them.
8. Centralization	The issue of orders creates a degree of centralization in all organizations. However, it is possible to increase employee autonomy (decentralization) or decrease it (centralization).
9. The Scalar Chain	Authority is hierarchical and must be made explicit. In other words, it must be clear who reports to whom.
10. Order	All materials and all activities should be kept where they are appropriate.
11. Equity	Employees should be treated justly.
12. Stability of Tenure	People resources should be planned for.
13. Initiative	Managers should encourage workers to be enthusiastic about their work.
14. Esprit de Corps	Management should encourage harmony and discourage destructive conflict within the organization.

Fayol’s principles are known today as classical management (or organization) theory, and they are so commonplace to traditional management literature that they are taken for granted. His concept of creating a theory of management that could be studied, taught, and practiced was an important milestone in the history of the field. However, Fayol himself cautioned that managers could not operat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Special Note to Managers
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: New Opportunities Within Organizations
• Part II: Improving Human Performance
• Part III: The Consultant as Instrument
• Appendix A: Benchmarking Study Report
• Appendix B: Project Report
• Index
• About the Author