Sara H's Key Ideas from Performance Consulting
by Jack J. Phillips, Dana Gaines Robinson, James C. Robinson, Patricia Pulliam Phillips, Dick Handshaw

In 1970, Joe Harless (Dixon, 1988, pp. 65-68) coined the term "front-end analysis." Use front-end analysis to focus on what people are expected to accomplish on the job versus what they are expected to learn.

"Solutions to problems are like keys and locks; they don't work if they don't fit. And if solutions aren't the right ones, the problem doesn't get solved."

Those who work effectively in the future must be able to:

• Develop collaborative working relationships with key managers and other partners
• Clearly understand the vision and strategies that management is striving to achieve
• Identify the performance required of employees if the organization is to thrive
• Determine the conditions in the work environment that must be modified if needed performance is to take root
• Work with people in and out of management to determine all the interventions required if high performance is to be achieved

help to identity the specific performance that is required for each group—

• the decisions they need to make,
• the analyses they need to do
• the actions that must be taken if that performance is to change.

Someone in the role of Performance Consultant thinks in terms of what people must DO if business goals are to be achieved. This is different from the traditional training process of focusing on what people must LEARN.

performance consultants develop four sets of skills and knowledge and utilize these techniques daily

1. Business knowledge
2. Knowledge of human performance technology
3. Partnering skill
4. Consulting skill

human performance technology — a systematic approach to analyzing improving and managing performance in the workplace through the use of appropriate and varied interventions.

human performance is a function of many influences: feedback, accountability, rewards, or incentives and motivation, etc.

PCs operate from the assumption that performance is a function of a system and not of any one element--solutions to performance problems will be systemic in nature and not unidimensional that is training alone will not be the solution.

• ake the initiative to meet work with and get the trust of managers and others within the organization.
• Form partnerships with various people in the organization: senior managers, other managers, supervisors thought, leaders, subject matter, experts, customers, and suppliers
• Represent a “one stop shopping“ benefit to their partners and act as a broker in Identifying the Training or performance need and find a way to address it.

1. Business needs the goals for a unit department or organization. there are two types: problems which define a gap between what should be occurring operationally and what is actually occurring : and opportunities which focus on a future operational goal.
2. Performance needs on the job behavioral requirements of people who are performing a specific job.
3. Training needs what people must LEARN if they are to PERFORM successfully
4. Work environment needs what systems and processes with the work environment of the performer must be modified if the performance needs are to be achieved

1. provides guidance in determining what information is important to obtain
2. Alerts to missing data in an area for example information about what successful performers do.
3. Act as a vehicle for displaying information to management illustrates the inter relationship between business performance training, and the work environment needs.

Continues…