Apr 19 2021

Just Keep Your Focus on Performance

A client in 2003 once told me my Focus on Performance reminded him of a saying his father had always said to him when he was younger.

Don’t worry about the mule going blind.

Just keep loading the wagon.

I’m not exactly a City Boy – but I had never heard that saying before – and I wasn’t exactly sure how to take it.

Then next day I asked him about it – and why he related that to me.

It was because throughout our Analysis Team Meeting – whenever one of the 12 Master Performers we had assembled for our key Analysis efforts (2 of the 4 types of ISD Analysis I do) wanted to drift off to talk about what the Target Audience needed to know or what Training was required – I’d gently pull (or was it push?) us back to a singular focus on the Performance Outputs and Tasks and Gaps.

We used this below as an organizing framework for the Performance Analysis … for the management populations.

Note the L-C-S framework…

Here are two of 20 Performance Model Charts we generated… L3…

And… S1…

In case you’re wondering – one of my Facilitator Rules/Tips is…

It was legible enough for the team – who were positioned to sit close to the Wall of Flip Charts posted – and me and my flip chart easel. And I’ve got that diagramed out. Which was my client’s first clue about me running this effort as a rather tight ship. Which was appropriate – given the client.

When we were done with capturing the Performance Requirements we shifted gears to the Enabling Knowledge/Skills. We used most of the following Categories…

Note the links back to the Performance Requirements in the charts below…

K/S Category #1 – Company Policies/ Procedures/ Practices/ Guidelines…

The dreaded K/S Category #9 – for Records/ Reports/ Documents/ Forms…

Yeah – my client thought I was a bit extreme – but then he decided he like my approach as we moved pretty darn quickly through the 3 days and produced more worthy data – according to the team assembled – than anyone would have imagined.

From Analysis Thinking to Design Thinking – at the Architectural Level

This Analysis effort produced data that was approved by a Project Steering Team – that was then used by the Design Team (a subset of the Analysis Team) that produced two T&D Paths – and Planning Guides and then an Implementation Plan with the Priorities of addressing the Unstructured OJT (Informal and Social Learning) of their Current State to their Future State.

T&D Path 1

T&D Path 2

If those T&D Events on the 2 Paths above – were books – then the T&D Modules (which would become T&D Lessons in any follow-on efforts) are akin to – chapters – shared with other Target Audiences either “As Is” or “After Modification” to reduce first costs for future efforts and life cycle costs for the entire Inventory of Instructional Content.

Here is one of several pages of the Module Inventory…