Click on image to enlarge and then copy, etc.

It’s Back!
Like a Zombie refusing to go away – the discussion of ADDIE’s viability, validity, utility has again risen. It seems that whenever a big conference occurs, participants get together and talk about the(ir) failures with ADDIE. Or their inability to convince/sell their clients on the value of Analysis – something Joe Harless bemoaned over 30 years ago.

Most practitioners have plenty of ISD methods to use within an ADDIE “project planning framework” – what they lack is a way to put them together in a lean, smooth and quick effort.

The PACT Processes for T&D/ Learning/ Knowledge Management are scalable from the focus on some small task-set, to an entire enterprise or value chain. And as a “common process” more people can be involved in some divide-and-conquer approach to speed/accelerate the “process” or “processes” to produce performance enabling training, development, learning, and knowledge management content. At the smallest level – PACT becomes RADD – an abbreviated version of PACT – when the needs scale is small and not enormous.

Not everything needed by a performer is training, or learning. Sometime the need “in the moment of need” is to look something up and then forgetaboutit.

Your analysis and design methods in your version of ADDIE (or not) and data produced – should make all of that clear in terms of needs and the appropriate means to address that to enable performance.

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30 years ago we were all taught to document our captured analysis insights from our observations and interviews in “certain ways.”

One of those “ways” included using “Noun Verb patterns” to describe tasks – the results of “typical” task analysis methods. Not my in approach/ methods/ process. But in many others.

Examples of this pattern include:

• Analysis Planned
• Analysis Interviews Scheduled
• Interviews Conducted
• Observations Conducted
• Analysis Report Published

I stopped using this for a couple of reasons…

1- I never liked having to explain “what these phrases” meant to our clients. That seemed absurd. Why wouldn’t they recognize our description of their performance requirements? It always hung us up on getting them to sign off on the completeness, accuracy and appropriateness of our “task analysis.” They could not see what “boundary conditions” we meant by this strange language – so they couldn’t tell if there were holes or overlaps in “our view.”

2- Early on in my career (in 1980 after less than a year on-the-job) I started to minimize my analysis efforts involving interviews and observations – and started to maximize my use of a “group process” to gather the data that I needed for my downstream design efforts – which I had “systematized” in my PACT Processes for the Curriculum Architecture Design level of ISD, and my Modular Curriculum Development level of ISD (known as ADDIE most other places).

And the groups of Master Performers and sometimes (as needed) other Subject Matter Experts, Supervisors/Management representatives, and Novice Performers (when appropriate) did not “call their work out” in those Noun-Verb patterns.

Any facilitator worth their salt could see that “going there” would be a big mistake. I did.

And so I never attempted to sell a room full of Master Performers on my conversions of their language – when it was darn difficult enough to get “concurrence on some of their language” between the assembled – which I often found was “varied” across the organization from the starting points of the facilitated analysis sessions.

Our building of a “Performance Model” with the handpicked Master Performers was perhaps a first step to commonizing the language – depending on how my client’s seized that opportunity. Many did – as that new language, conceded to by the Master Performers themselves, most often made it straight to the language in the titling of content downstream – in the PACT Processes “design steps” where the analysis data is processed – for both CAD and MCD.

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Balancing Conflicting Stakeholder Requirements-
by Guy W. Wallace, CPT
Originally authored in 1994, published in 1995, and updated here in 2010

Now available at here as a 16 page PDF.

I had titled it “The Customer is King – Not” – but they had the editorial prerogative.

The article was written after a discussion with a client about “the customer is king” and my resistance to including that in a 6-day “performance-based” training course for project leaders in leading multi-million dollar projects (hundreds of millions really) – when I had strong feelings about “the customer is king” sloganeering I had encountered at many of my client organizations in the 1980s and early 1990s.

So I wrote the article that created “the graphics” below – for illustrative purposes only – yours will definitely look different!

There are many other potential stakeholders not represented in the graphic/model.

Once you have the somewhat simple model – you can tease out and build a matrix for all stakeholder requirements. Some might see the last graphic as a QFD output – and they would be thinking along similar lines. QFD being Quality Function Deployment.

And the sad truth is that there might be many “conflicts” between all of those REQUIREMENTS and WANTS.

And that success will “almost always” depend on the enterprise being able to “navigate in these waters” that constantly churn.

The only constant is constant change.

Can your efforts keep up?

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You can follow my quarterly columns at PROVEN at:

http://www.getproven.com/

The older content is viewable – but the latest issue isn’t – for some reason that I don’t understand – unless they are only providing the past issues of PROVEN. So, at least you can catch up! My quarterly series is in all but one of the issues – volume# 2 issue #4. There are 11 columns submitted to the editors at PROVEN – so far.

The columns present my models, methods and approach to implementing HPT – Human Performance Technology via EPPI – Enterprise Process Performance Improvement.

The EPPI methods, etc., is an extension of the PACT Processes for T&D/ Learning/ Knowledge Management – especially for the analyst and somewhat for the Project Planner/Manager. Less so for the distinctly ISD roles in PACT.

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Some of us focus on Learning and Training in an Enterprise setting.

There the objective is clear:

protect and improve the enterprise

Focus on improving performance in small, simple processes and in large, complex processes based on the value of addressing that need. Use the business metrics of the processes you are addressing to measure your impact.

Respond to the issue (problem and/or opportunity) in the least expensive manner – from a life cycle perspective, not from a first-costs perspective – without reducing results. Know what the value of the PIP – Potential for Improved Performance is. That PIP is the same as the R in ROI – Return on Investment. And the PIP is the same as the CoNC – Cost of Non-Conformance.

Performance Competence is defined by the STAKEHOLDERS and not just the customer or the customer’s customer.

Performance Competence is the ability to perform tasks to produce outputs to stakeholder requirements – at the individual, process, enterprise and society levels.

Those “levels” have more recently been tagged as: the worker, the work, the workplace and the world. That works too.

So if your formal or informal learning/ training/ knowledge management “solution” is targeted at enabling people to perform – then you are on the right track. If it targets some content for “in the moment of need” and some for “before the moment of need” (with more reinforcers & reminders for recall) – then you are on the right track. If your solution cost is much lower than the varied types of returns the enterprise will get back – then you are on the right track.

Then you will be on the track to Performance Competence. A worthy goal for those of us in Learning and Training. And Knowledge Management.

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In the spring of 1999 my firm at the time, CADDI, congratulated General Motors Corporation’s MFD (Metal Fabrication Division) Tool and Die Supervisors College for winning the 1998 Chairman’s Award – in our quarterly newsletter here.

The award, given by General Motors Corporation CEO Jack Smith, recognizes one of the “best of the best” global business initiatives in 1998 that has helped to move the business forward. Each division within General Motors, whether in North America or in other countries, has an opportunity to win the award.

The College received the honor for the structured recruiting process and the rigorous
training and development curriculum that prepares new supervisors for a very skillful and challenging job.

Here is a short 1:32 video clip from the full 12 minute video.

This is one of the few times the award has been won around a training initiative.

The awards are usually from technical areas, according to James Ankton, manager of the College. Ankton said he believes this award is excellent recognition for the College and General Motors’ commitment to training and developing their people.

Guy Wallace facilitated the CAD analysis and design meetings and several MCD combination analysis/design meetings back in 1997 as part of a PPTT – PACT Process Technology Transfer effort (1905-2000) where hundreds were trained and certified across a half dozen or so GM contractor communities. The T&D Path was intended to be 18 months of one week in the classroom and then one week on the job, applying what had been learned as well as attending to the work at hand.

See the full video (12 minutes) here.

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And here is a video clip of Harold Stolovitch at ISPI’s 99 Seconds Session from back a decade ago – in 2000…

See more at: ISPITube

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One of the 40 plus videos I uploaded to the new ISPI YouTube site: ISPITube:

Claude (Butch) Lineberry

If you are interested in looking back a decade at some 99 Seconds lessons from the year 2000 – there are about a dozen posted.

And if you’d like to see the diversity of HPT practitioners and their practice check out the HPT Practitioner Podcast series there as well.

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Why call my “ISD stuff” the PACT Processes?

Why the “process” label versus methodology? And what about other ISD concepts, models, tools, templates, and techniques?

Background
I’ve been in an ISD role since 1979 – and as an external consultant with 60-some clients that were Training and Learning and Performance “named” functions/departments – I’ve seen the activity and results from “methodologies” out of control. Methodologies applied at the last moment because now it seems appropriate, but sending the schedule back another week or two. Or three.

What client’s wanted is predictable results and costs and schedules. Results being their clients being satisfied with the post-training levels of competence back-on-the-job. Costs being one or the other or both’s concerns, as well as schedules. Time is money, as they say.

Predictability of quality of outputs and outcomes, the costs and schedule was/is a key driver for me. Because my clients drive me that way.

Requests from clients initially fall into two types for me: ReActive and ProActive – where you are trying to fix an identified issue (problem and/or opportunity) – or you are trying to get ahead of performance issues and train people for the jobs, so that they are better oriented, and the necessary survival skills, and know what they need to continue to learn “on the job” and “how to go about doing that, and with whom.”

ReActive
Sometimes they wanted me to address a problem with training. Most of the time – I’d say over 80% of – my projects were about pro-active training versus reactive training – more on that later.

Then I’d do as Joe Harless taught us all – and – don’t say “are you sure it’s a knowledge/skill and training issue? No. He taught us to say: “Of course I can help you! Let’s start with a little analysis!”

Then I’d plan the project, take it into and through analysis – and then let the data chips fall where they may – and if the analysis showed that gaps from ideal performance (actually accomplished by the Master Performers on the formally appointed project Analysis Team) were due to a knowledge/skill deficit of the Performers (potential Learners) – then we’d take the approved/modified analysis data and “other direction solicited from the Project Steering Team” into the Design Phase with the Design Team.

But on several project efforts the analysis actually showed the Project Steering Team that the causes of the gaps – according their handpicked Master Performers on the Analysis Team – were not solvable with training.

On a couple of occasions my client would start making little noises or squirming in their chairs. They had a contractual project with me. So I would quickly get them to the point where , as I told them at the front end of each time we met, they needed to decide to

1- kill the project as it no longer made business sense.
2- defer the effort as it is no longer timely
3- modify the approach as it is now deemed necessary
4- support the effort as planned

And then I would recommend either 1 or 2. And then shift into how the data generated thus far could be used by Critical Action Teams, or inputs to lean-six sigma efforts, etc.

ProActive
ProActive projects are those where the client want to formally orient and skill-up some critical target audience before and after “they take the floor” or “take the wheel” or start “soloing in their new job role.”

Sometime they need to build or revisit the training paths/ learning paths/ performance development guides that they have in place – or don’t have in place – and that requires a CAD effort. Curriculum Architecture Design produces performance-based T&D Paths that lay out how existing content (Instruction and Information) and “gap content” could be used to develop “Performance Competence.”

A CAD is not an ADDIE-like effort. It produces no new content. It produces an architecture that give you several types of “blueprints” for going forward and building/buying the content needed. Or identifying where someone gets on Facebook or some other SN and does “what for some defined learning purpose.” Not mindless, direction-less wandering cyberspace. learning whatever for some undefined purpose. Not early in some one’s path. Later perhaps.

My intent with PACT, those 3-levels of design “lean ISD processes” was to provide tight guidance to new ISDers/PACT Practitioners – who would later take off the training wheels of that tight guidance and start improvising – with PACT – once they learn how to flex it – in a -planned and predictable manner.

Miki Lane, the new incoming President of ISPI in 2010, wrote a review for lean-ISD in 1999…

In 2007 I made the lean-ISD book available as a free 404-page PDF – and I produced 12 audio podcasts – for your windshield time or flight time.

Of course it is entirely up to you, but I would first skim the reading assignments, listen to the Podcast, and then go back a READ the chapters listed.

And then if you’d like more there are quite a few presentations and articles on this – lean-ISD via the PACT Processes – on Slideshare that might be of interest to you.

The FREE resources on PACT and other related Training/ Learning/ Knowledge Management topics are all available at http://www.eppic.biz/

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If you had been at ISPI in 2000 you would have heard about the research that debunked Learning Styles from Rob Foshay at the 99 Seconds Opening Session – hosted by Thiagi.

See more of these videos at ISPI’s YouTube site: ISPITube

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A little comic relief about mobile phones…

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I am an architect of instructional and informational content for performance-based systems to enable performance competence at all levels of an enterprise.

In my PACT Logic – the data logic of my ISD “processes” – the 3 levels of Design in PACT – I have made some arbitrary decisions that had to be made.

I divided all types of content (Instruction & Information) into 5 types and created my conceptual storage structure, framework, inventory around that. Click on the first graphic for a look at “what analysis data” feeds which level in the 5-Tier Inventory Structure – which is central to the concepts/ models of the ECA – Enterprise Content Architecture.

That structure would “hold” all of the modular elements – not necessarily the modules – which for most mean the “final product” and in my use I mean “a component” of a final product. Those “moduleal elements” from the bottom for me – to the top – are:

T&D Instructional Activities
These are Infos or Demos or Appos (Application Exercises) within a Lesson. The Lesson is the wrapper for IAs.

They are also tagged as going to a level of depth of: Awareness, Knowledge, Skill. Because if your create your content “right” you should be able to create the Instructional Activity of XYZ (Skill/Info) and have not-inadvertently also created the Instructional Activity of XYZ (Awareness/Info) as well as Instructional Activity of XYZ (Knowledge/Info) all in one effort.

Because – aren’t they building blocks anyway? Then why doesn’t your “design concepts and models” accommodate that. Then if the need includes taking an audience to skill, and some to knowledge, and others to awareness, you are able to more efficiently.

Instructional Activities are the basic Lego-like building block – unless you wish to go to individual pictures and/or paragraphs of text. I can. But most might prefer me not to.

T&D Lessons
These are the wrappers for Instructional Activities. This is where the “analysis data” is first dumped in the Design Team Meeting and organized by the assembled Master Performers (from the Analysis Team) so that it makes sense in terms of sequence, length, intended depth-of-coverage level (awareness, knowledge or skill) and even title. Following the Truth in Titling Format of PACT of course.

T&D Events
Events are the final product in PACT. Also known as courses, modules, workshops, sessions, classes, video, CBT, elearning course, reading assignment, task assignment, project assignment, etc. My rule is “it is at the Event level” where we track sign ups, completions, etc. I would sign up for an Event. In a modular (not module) approach to design there are layers underneath. In PACT it’s the Lessons and their Instructional Activities (and then the additional layers down below that depending on your needs to control those too). If Events were books the Lessons would be chapters – and if chapters were divided they would be Instructional Activities.

T&D Paths
If Events are books, then Paths are the reading list.

Paths are created for a specific job title or job family. Sometimes they are menus instead of paths. They are “as rigid as required and as flexible as feasible.” Which means they ultimately have flex, but can be tightened up. I do that by having the PST designate which Events on the Path are M-Mandatory, or HR- Highly Recommended, or E-Elective. They like exerting that kind of control on what’s critically important and what’s less so. It’s all needed by a performer – it’s just that some of them may show up with some of this anyway. Why waste shareholder equity on that?

Here is the T&D Path for a Supervisor. The Path has always been a marketing poster to be used in the PST GRM at the end of the design phase. I put them over the coffee pot so as to get every one’s attention before the meeting starts. I let a lot of these meetings start late if the PST members have congregated around the coffee pot. Click on this next graphic and take a good look…

The Path began in the Design Meeting as a 3-parter, now it’s 4. Originally it was Beginning-Middle-End, 3-parts. But as the Design Team is empowered – within limits – they eventually do as I suggest when I tell them “I own the process. You own the content.” Once they take control of that, within my process, they end up owning it. Right where I wanted them.

Then this next Path is a building block…a continuation of the path…at the next level…for the Zone Manager who is the boss of the Supervisor. These were both produced in the same CAD project, in 2003 for the Production organization of the US Navy’s Norfolk Naval Shipyard.

If someone came in to the Zone Manager job from a job “other than” the Supervisor – there would be some formal and informal learning to pick up from the prior path – the Supervisor’s Path. As always, that depends – on the incoming skills and experiences of the new Zone Manager.

And the Zone Manager’s boss would have to figure that out either on their own – or using some tool built to help facilitate that. It’s what I would have built in the CAD effort’s Phase 3 Design as a tool for my getting the Project Steering Team (PST) to actually test the Curriculum Architecture Design in the end-of-phase Gate Review Meeting (GRM). The GRM is where we facilitated the PST in an “acid test” of our own design – that client’s always felt adequate for them to bend and try to break the output.

How well did it do in their personal tests was always key to getting their blessings, but more importantly getting their real attention and excitement. This was always the first deliverable that they could “use.”

lean-ISD is my 1999 book that covers the PACT Processes for T&D, Learning/ Knowledge Management.

The book is available as a free 404-page PDF at http://www.eppic.biz/

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I am going to redo this series soon – but here is my initial offering of the first video in the series: The School of PACT:

For both Formal Learning – and to guide Informal Learning – toward a “Performance Competence” ends.

What do you think? Helpful in understanding PACT well enough, too much, or just right?

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I agree with Clark Quinn about the need for “mental models” when he says:
“I have long argued that we don’t use mental models enough in our learning, and also that we focus too much on knowledge and not enough on skills.” (from his recent Blog Post here).

Yes. For some reason I always strove to create some “icon” for every major consulting ISD development project – something for the learners. Something they could hang the piece parts of learning onto – as they accumulated awareness, knowledge and skills required for the defined terminal Learning Goal as a Performance Competence:

Performance Competence is the ability (of individuals, teams, departments, functions, and the enterprise and it’s Value Chains) to perform tasks to produce outputs to meet stakeholder requirements.

In complex learning the mental model is best when it is an authentic frame of reference that has utility for the learner as a learner and then later as a performer.

Thinking that the learner is always a learner and not thinking of them as learners learning to perform as a performer first and foremost – can take your adventures in learning off the path of having “returns” for the enterprise first and the learners/Performers second.

That’s the way you’d think about it if it were your money owning 100% of the shares in your enterprise. Unless you just didn’t care about returns on your investments and are willing to go broke.

Here is a former post with one of the “mental models as icons” I’ve created in the past on Labor Relations for the former Illinois Bell (back in 1991).

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This 11:36 short video was produced by my clients at General Motors back in 1997:

Note: the PACT Processes (CAD and MCD) were relabeled as MC/MI = Modular Curriculum and Modular Instruction in this PACT Process Technology Transfer effort for GM. This video is primarily about a demo project I was doing – where I led the analysis and design (at 2 levels) efforts for what became an 18-month T&D Path where the new supervisor-to-be would spend one week in class and then one week on-the-job applying what they had learned in class, plus doing THE REAL WORK AT HAND.

I literally finished the first of a series of design meetings at the modular course level (ADDIE-like) after the performance analysis and Curriculum Architecture design level – and the developers (sitting in the back of the room observing and taking the copious notes required because in a meeting such as this – not everything said makes it to the flip chart) rushed out of the room to lead their teams and get ahead of that first class that was starting in weeks. I and others designed and teams of developers sat in and then rushed into rapid development and pilot-testing – which was class #1. That was in the summer of 1997.

In 1998 my client won the: General Motors Chairman’s Quality Award for the Metal Fabrication Division New Supervisor’s Training System.

Again, the analysis and Curriculum Architecture design and then the ADDIE-level design for each chunk of the 18 month path was done by Guy, and observed by others who were involved in the PPTT, as a pre-step to their attendance in workshops to learn the skills needed to become analysts, CA designers, instructional designers, and project planners/managers. Then they applied that on the job (the MC/MI or PACT Practitioners) and were observed and certified at one of 6 levels (usually as someone who can solo – a level 3).

Note: I have a formal certification system that I use for those being certifying in those 4 roles, plus one other of Lead Developer, where the certification is based on “demonstrated performance competency” of the tasks and production of outputs from these flexible “processes.”

In other words, we use Performance Tests. Practicing what we preach.

Which, Performance Tests that is, is the subject of this book: Performance-based Employee Qualification/ Certification Systems that I co-authored with Ray Svenson, published (as a free PDF) in January of 2008. It – Performance Testing systems and tests is an example of an IAD level of analysis and design in the overall 3 levels of design in PACT. It – IAD – produces tests, which are components of traditional training and later traditional, formal training (or informal learning) could be done prior to the testing. Or just use the testing – and see if the learning needed to perform will occur on its own, with other things also in place to help with motivation. It has for several clients in the past.

In PACT, CADs are the architectural level, MCD is the ADDIE-like new product development level, and IAD is the component development level – when you don’t need the full learning solutions-set right now, or maybe ever. All your client may really want/need at times are just the tests, or just the demos, or just the exercises, or just overviews but no depth.

The video remarks on the collaborative nature required. My experience is that Master Performers like being involved and leveraging what they know with other Master Performers, because they too tend to learn things in the process of developing Training/ Learning and Knowledge Management content: instruction and/or information.

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As the ISPI Conference is coming up, I thought I’d help a little with the marketing/promotional efforts by helping those who do not know ISPI – the International Society for Performance Improvement – and it’s methodology-set known as HPT: Human Performance Technology – or PI: Performance Improvement – or even HPI: Human Performance Improvement - define it.

So what is HPT – Human Performance Technology, the old-school term for what it is that those from ISPI tend to do for a living?

What are some examples of the applications of HPT and for what ends, what ROI? Who practices HPT and in what contexts? And who are some of the current and past “luminaries” who are lighting the paths for others to follow?

That is what I’ve tried to capture – and encourage others to do as well – with the two video podcast series that I began in 2007:

1- HPT Practitioner Series – shorter, 3-7 minutes of responses to a scripted set of questions. Intended to show the diversity of HPT practitioners and practices.

2- HPT Legacy Series – longer, 15 to 45 minutes, relaxed, some-what scripted video interview recordings. Intended to capture the thoughts of long-time members about their past association with NSPI and ISPI – and their memories of others in the profession – from “back in the day.”

HPT Practitioner Series (24)
From 2008…
- Joe Harless
- Guy Wallace
- Marc Rosenberg
- Roger Addison
- Clare Carey
- Roger Chevalier
- Brian Desuatels
- Rob Foshay
- Carol Haig
- Ruhe Hao
- Jim Hill
- Roger Kaufman
- Andreas Kuehn
- Miki Lane
- Mark Laurin
- Luise Schneider
- Geary Rummler
- Fred Stewart
- Ray Svenson
- Don Tosti
- Klaus Wittkuhn

In 2009…
- Joe Harless (2nd v-podcast)
- Guy Wallace (2nd v-podcast)
- Thiagi

HPT Legacy Series (7)
In 2009…
- Joe Harless
- Roger Addison
- Miki Lane
- Darryl Sink
- Judy Hale
- Ray Svenson
- Margo Murray

I hope these give you a sense for HPT, and that it certainly is – beyond, but inclusive of, performance-based Instructional Systems Design. That’s just my area of expertise and experience. But it certainly does not define the extent of HPT.

I will be capturing more HPT Legacy and HPT Practitioner video interviews this year. I have about 12 lined up so far – which might leave me some time to attend some really great sessions – I’ve planned to attend – but will remain flexible in order to capture more videos!

And, I hope to see you in San Francisco the week of April 19th at ISPI!

Cheers!

Guy W. Wallace, CPT

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