Sep 5 2011

On A Day Celebrating Labor in the USA – A Reminder About Gilbert’s Leisurely Theorems

In 1978, Thomas Gilbert published his book: Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance

In that he described the Behavior Engineering Model (BEM) for performance analysis. He also (the page prior) had his model for Creating Performance Incompetence – which I have written about before as a great set-up/intro to the BEM. Read about that here.

Back to the BEM and Gilbert’s model – which consists of three Leisurely Theorems that:

Distinguish between accomplishment and behavior to define “worthy performance”
Identifies methods for determining the “potential for improving performance (the PIP)”
Describe six essential components of behavior that can be manipulated to effect performance – which is the 6 Boxes that Carl Binder refers to. And others.

My take on this is that I really like all versions of the BEM – especially the model that proceeds it in Human Competence – with the exception that there is little focus on the Process or Processes that human are competent or incompetent in.

My approach – EPPI – combines the BEM – and a process orientation – and actually starts with a Process orientation within the Context of the organization (or Enterprise). I’ve written about that a lot here – so look those posts using EPPI if you are so interested.

What I learned years ago (decades ago to be truthful) from Gilbert and Rummler and Mager and Harless – and dozens if not hundreds of others – is to focus on Performance (Accomplishments in Gilbert’s terms). Not on behaviors – which are indeed important – if secondary – or maybe tertiary.

If you follow the work of the late W. Edwards Deming – he attributed 94% of performance problems (my wording here) are due to the system and not to the individual (6%) – and that management was responsible for the system. So: quit blaming the people! Look at and fix the System – the Process – and all that enables it – or not.

Rummler said/wrote it seemed to be an 80/20 split. Other have other numbers – and no one has empirical evidence – to back up their numbers – and most said so about that fact too.

So, on this Day celebrating Labor – let’s learn to stop blaming them and fixing them – with Training or Mobile Performance Support – or Stationary Performance Support.

Let’s focus elsewhere to start. Let’s do the due diligence of Analysis without Paralysis – to seek the root causes – establish baseline measurements – and be good stewards of the Shareholders’ equity – and move the needles of Measured Results and ROI and not just Costs as we seek to make improvements.

And for those celebrating Labor Day in the USA (and anywhere) – I hope you find some time today for some Leisure!

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