Apr 26 2018

T&D: Beyond Training to Performance

Most of My Mentors Addressed Both Training and Performance

I started out in 1979 immediately being influenced by Bob Mager, Geary Rummler and Tom Gilbert. Soon thereafter it was Joe Harless, Harold Stolovitch, and then a couple of years later Neil Rackham and John Carlisle and many, many from the world of TQM – Total Quality Management including Deming, Juran, and Ishikawa.

And then I went to work with Ray Svenson.

All took a broader approach to Training for Performance – and looked at other variables to Performance – should simply addressing performance-based Knowledge/Skills not be enough to change the Measured Results.

When I started developing my methodology set – driven by a need to have multiple consultants – on staff and sub-contractors – working in harmony and consistently – on this project at hand and on another somewhere down the road.

My methods needed to work at every level of Performance – from The Value Chain down to the Individual. I wanted a short & sweet definition of GOOD (Performance Competence). And I needed it to reflect the reality of a multitude of Stakeholders whose needs – and sometimes wants – needed to be satisfied. And it needed to address the Performance Variables including but beyond Knowledge/Skills.

This is the top level of those needs – my needs…

The Wallace Performance Competence Variables – 12 Boxes

The 12 Boxes are the variables in the EPPI Fishbone Diagram – include the design of the Process itself. I’ve posted about this previously.

People perform in Processes (formal/named and informal/unnamed) – as well as teams – and departments/functions are simply bundles of Processes as are Enterprises and Value Chains. So I wanted to focus on the Process – and multiple Processes as needed.

Performance Competence at All Levels.png

The fishbone diagram is an adaptation of the Ishikawa Diagram from the 1950s in Japan – which I learned about in the late 1970s/early1980s.

Ishikawa Diagram

The spines on the fishbone come from an exposure to MRP and MRPII in 1981 combined with what I was learning about Performance Improvement that later became Human Performance Technology (HPT) from NSPI (now ISPI).

The 4 Ms of the traditional Ishikawa Diagram – Men, Materials, Methods and Machines – Ishikawa’s 4 Boxes (or would it be 5?) were separated by me into 2 classes – Human Assets and Environmental Assets – due to me being influenced Gilbert’s BEM (the next diagram). I liked segregating all of the human variables from the non-human variables.

As Deming taught, most (94%) of quality issues, were due to The System – not to the individual workers/performers. So I wanted my model to separate those two sets of variables.

My Process orientation comes from working with Geary Rummler after I joined a training department in 1979 where his brother-in-law worked and my 2 colleagues had previously worked with his brother – and then I got to work directly with him while I was at Motorola (1981-1982).

Gilbert’s BEM – 6 Boxes

Gilbert’s work – and the BEM were further detailed and extended by Don Bullock, Roger Chevalier, and Carl Binder.

Rummler’s Performance Matrix – 9 Boxes

Geary himself referred to this model as his 9 boxes. It was a play on the Binder version of the BEM – the Six Box model.

Rummler joined forces with Alan Brache in the late 1980s. Their work is carried on today by the Rummler-Brache organization – who offer workshops for others to learn their methods. See more about that at: www.rummlerbrache.com

Before Geary joined with Brache – he delivered and shared much of his work and models at NSPI (later ISPI), at Motorola, and many other conferences focused on Training, HR, and Business Process Engineering, etc.

I have quite a collection of these. He gave them away freely as it was old by the time he printed it and presented it as he was all about Continuous Improvement.