Star Performers: A New Model for Improving Employee Performance

http://www.astd.org/Publications/Blogs/Human-Capital-Blog/2013/09/Star-Performers-a-New-Model-for-Improving-Employee-Performance

Smart Grids Start With Smarter Employees by Doug Mead and Al Folsom

http://www.elp.com/articles/2012/09/smart-grids-start-with-smarter-employees.html

Improve Safe Performance Using Exemplary Human Performance System by Carl English and Doug Mead

http://www.utilityproducts.com/articles/print/volume-17/issue-6/product-focus/safety-products/improve-safety-performance-using-exemplary-human-performance-sys.html

Improve Your Organization's Performance Now!

Follow Proven Human Performance Strategies for Success.

Improve employee performance, quality, productivity,and retention with the first complete system for Human Performance Technology.

There has never been a time when business, industry, government, and military organizations have had a greater need for strategies to improve workforce performance as a key component in their bid to gain and maintain a competitive edge.

There is a need for a Peak Performance System. Despite massive infusion of capital-intensive, advanced technology in North America, many organizations are losing the performance and quality race. The quality of products and services has not always kept pace with the expenditure. In fact, many think there has been a significant decline in performance and quality overall. This problem shows up in the market place, especially where North American organizations are in a competitive mode with each other and with foreign organizations. Happily, many enlighten leaders in business, industry, and government recognized the problem and therefore see the need for improvement in quality of goods and services. Though performance and quality is on everyone's lips, few quality programs seem to target directly the prime ingredient in the improvement of products and services; The actions and accomplishments of humans on-the-job.

Given initial capital investment, the largest cost to most organizations is direct labor and overhead of people. Though there is a large number of influences on human performance, current performance and quality improvement efforts do not consider all influences, but target a relatively narrow range of variables impacting performance. For example, statistical measurement, inspections, employee involvement, and so forth.

Many quality improvement efforts are conceptual. They do not have systematic procedures to guide the improvement effort. The goals and processes are often open to wide interpretation.

Within the same organization, performance and quality efforts are often fragmented. There is an absence of goals and objectives. This is an absence of a common model and language. Efforts tend to act independently, and sometimes in opposition to each other. There is a need for a system that is systematic, and for one that focuses on human performance.

Dr. Tom Gilbert, the father of Human Performance Technology, taught us that the economic costs of training are significantly high enough as to warrant our immediate and constant attention through analysis; and, that training should be primarily organization goal related and performance-based.

Now you can learn how to:

• Install a state-of-the-art systematic approach to training (SAT) process (or) replace/enhance your current SAT process.
• Analyze performance problems to examine all organizational influences on performers.
• Provide analysts with tools and processes for identifying a solution set that closes all gaps affecting human performance.
• Figure out the right performance supports for the best cost.
• Choose exactly the right training (and other interventions) to effectively support your workers!
• Directly and substantially impact the effectiveness of your business.
• Effectively demonstrate the improvements of your workers' performance on key business measures!

The Job Aids Workshop, The Front End Analysis Workshop, the Accomplishment-Based Curriculum Development System, and the Peak Performance System are on the cutting-edge of human performance technology. We have conducted hundreds of projects to learn the most effective way to impact people's performance in the workplace. This is an opportunity to tap into thousands of hours of research in the field and apply it to your situation. These workshop are presented in-house at your facility and you can become qualified to present these workshops to your organization.

You will receive:

• State-of-the-art concepts and procedures
• Step-by-step written job aids for all procedures presented
• Personal consultation on your projects and your organization

We offer you three opportunities to improve the quality of human performance:


1. Job Aids Workshop (JAWS)

Job aids save time and money. A job aid is a tool to guide performance in real time. Examples: Checklists, Decision Tables, Algorithms (flow charts), Worksheets, and Cookbooks. The time it takes to develop a job aid is three to five times shorter than with traditional instruction and implementation time is three times shorter. Job aids solve retention problems and result in more accurate performance.

Who should attend: Course Developers, Procedure Writers, Documentation Writers, Technical Writers, Performance Technologists, Quality Consultants

Learn how to:

• Identify exactly when and where to use job aids to help your workers' perform better
• Determine precisely which type of job aid will produce the desired outcome in any situation
• Produce job aids that meet or exceed your expectations; job aids which are cost-effective, have short cycle times, and make a maximum business impact
• Practice developing job aids
• Produce effective, high quality job aids by the end of the workshop!
• Take home a detailed job aid you can use to produce other job aids for all your future projects!

2. Front End Analysis (FEA) Workshop

Analysis is an important link to producing cost-effective human performance. Front End Analysis ensure that activities, outputs and goals complement each other to reduce or eliminate waste and rework.

Learn:

• Analytic methodologies that recognize and record all the factors that influence job-site performance.
• How to use analytic tools that are goal related and performance based.
• How to calculate worth=value-cost to ensure return-on-investment.

Front-End Analysis is a state-of-the-art workshop that will teach you how to assess, analyze, and plan solutions to human performance problems-including "soft skills." And, how to analyze new performance.

Who should attend: Performance Technologists, Course Developers, Trainers, and Quality Consultants

As a Front End Analysis (FEA) Workshop Participant, You'll learn how to:

• Tie your work directly to improved performance
• Determine the most effective way of dealing with a problem
• Decide if training is truly the best solution to a problem, and when other interventions would be more appropriate
• Conduct a New Performance Front End Analysis when dealing with new goals, new processes, new technologies, and/or new workers
• Conduct a Diagnostic Front End Analysis when current worker in current work environments are not meeting organizational goals
• Establish "buy-in" and support for the Front End Analysis process
• Establish up front criteria to use in measuring the effectiveness of your analysis
• Select the best Front End Analysis tool for a given situation
• Take home practical job aids to use for each aspect of a highly successful Front End Analysis at your organization

3. The Accomplishment-Based Curriculum Development System (ABCD)

Build a STATE-OF-THE-ART training organization with the award-winning ABCD system.

ABCD is a complete, job-aided system for all steps of ALL tasks of all phases of training development.

Benefits include:

• Produce shorter courses
• Efficient course development time
• Dramatically increased job-proficiency of students as a result of ABCD-developed training.

Learn How to:

• Tie training directly to organizational goals and improvements in productivity--a true performance-based approach to training
• Establish a one-to-one link between the training you provide and the measurements of trainees' job performance
• Your people will return to the job with the highest level of competence and a greater understanding of how their work supports the achievement of organizational goals!
• Reduce the amount and length of training courses, yet increase their impact
• Produce, as a subject-matter expert, high quality training immediately upon completion of ABCD
• Design and develop a full range of job aids
• Design and develop curricula, courses, and modules, including practices and tests
• Produce participant and instructor guides
• Select media appropriate to training content
• Develop self-instructional materials
• Test, validate, and evaluate training materials
• Plan for the implementation of training including the details of administration
• Thanks to a wealth of procedures, job aids, and worksheets, any non-trainers assigned to your training department will rapidly become competent in the process of analysis, design, and development. You will be able to "Hit the ground running!"

Joe Harless, Developer of the Workshop's Concepts. Joe Harless, a member of the prestigious Human Resource Development Hall of Fame, designed and developed these workshops that will revolutionize your business. Often referred to as the "trainer's trainer" Joe Harless has received the coveted Member for Life award from the National Society for Performance and Instruction (now, The International Society for Performance Improvement). In short, he has a unique genius for solving performance problems.

Many of the top fortune 500 companies and Government Agencies are satisfied alumni of these outstanding workshops: Allstate, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Procter and Gamble, Sandia Labs, Bell Canada, Chase Manhattan, Home Savings, M&M Mars, U.S. Coast Guard, BellSouth, Federal Express, Boeing, General Motors, Bellcore, Duke Power, American Express, Sprint, Motorola U.S Marine Corps, Microsoft.

For more information, go to dougmead.com.

How to Achieve Business Success!

Learn how to survive and thrive in these challenging economic times. Learn how to prepare your business and your employees for fierce global competition and technological change. Learn how practice the science of productivity that results in dramatic improvements in human performance.

Help your people know what is expected of them in their jobs, and make available to them the information that will guide them to do excellent work. Learn how to give them a clear, frequent picture of how well they are performing and what it is they might do to improve their performance. Help your people measure their performance against achievable business goals.

To achieve business success, learn how to analyze, design, develop, test, implement, and evaluate your work systems to most cost-effectively influence human performance that is of value to the basic business goals of your organization.

Learn how to improve your human performance system to ensure smooth work process balance and flow. Improve productivity, reduce errors, reduce rework, improve customer satisfaction and reduce operating costs.

The purpose of my web site, dougmead.com, is to help you accomplish your business goals by sharing knowledge, information and resources to assist you in engineering cost-effective peak human performance.

This useful web site offers plain and simple-to-use resources designed to enhance your performance improvement knowledge, know-how and results.

My focus is adding value for clients, their customers and the global environment. Feel free to take a tour of my web site to discover valuable resources to help you accomplish your business goals. Learn about expert performance-based resources that facilitate the creation of valued results for individuals, organizations, and society in general.

Dr. Paul Elliott, Dr. Tom Gilbert, Dr. Joe Harless, and Dr. Geary Rummler, early mentors, showed many of us that performance improvement could be approached as a science; and, who taught many of us to concentrate on outputs and accomplishments before considering processes. Discover how-to use Human Performance Technology (HPT) to meet or exceed your business goals, strategies, and objectives.

Dr. Tom Gilbert taught us that all engineering begins with the simple economic purpose of creating worthy performance that ensures the value of our accomplishments exceeds the cost of the behavior.
dougmead.com provides you with the most important resources you need to analyze, compare and decide on the best approach to achieve your business goals. This site also provides additional human performance resources to help you learn more about the growing field of Human Performance Improvement. Please make yourself at home throughout this web site. Take what you need and don't forget to BOOKMARK this site for continued reference in the future.

Human Performance Excellence

Do you want learn how-to maximize your organization's work system efficiency, optimize employee and process performance, cut waste, and increase profitability?

Then discover a multi-pronged approach to organizational effectiveness. Workforce performance management is emerging as the primary path toward providing greater alignment of corporate goals and visibility into both individual and organizational performance.

Maximizing the performance of the global workforce is quickly becoming a top priority in the executive offices of thought-leading organizations. Organizations that excel in developing the workforce tend to be high performers and dominate their markets.

The solution:

Step 1:
Read "Read Human Competence; Engineering Worthy Performance", by Thomas F. Gilbert.

• Gilbert, Thomas F. "Human Competence; Engineering Worthy Performance". New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1978

The book cover flap;
Not just another run-of-the mill book on human performance, this provocative volume offers you a new system for getting the most out of people. Sharply departing from standard theories of human behavior, this guide details approaches that have already proved their worth in many companies and schools. Shattering many a precedent, it give you scores of innovative new ideas for, developing people.

Here are just two of the solid benefits that you can expect from the methods explained in this remarkable book:

• You can reduce training time and costs (in industry and in schools) by two thirds while you double training effectiveness.

• You can increase people's productivity by 50% to 200% and often more, while making their jobs more interesting and less demanding.These startling claims are fully validated as the author shows you, step0by-step, how it is possible to achieve these results in your company or school.

The secret? An original theory of engineering human performance, coupled with a detailed plan of action based on proven applications in industry, government, and the schools. Grounded on brilliant principles and sound applications and educational practice, this result-getting volume....

• Explains how to identify people who have the potential to be exemplary performers

• details various economic models for reducing expenses, increasing productivity, improving learning, and other benefits. Plus special easy-to-use worksheets for putting these models in action.

• Shows how to diagnose causes of performance failure - and how to tailor the best remedies to each problem.

• Reveals a remarkable easy way to improve the competence of employees and students substantially.

• Describes a general procedure for measuring any performance - and for translating these measures into economic opportunity.

• Shows how to design training and educational systems that bring better results than ever before.

Upsetting many established ideas, the book dramatically illustrates how the regulation of behavior actually promotes incompetence. It also reveals the relative ineffectiveness of popular "assessment center" approaches to human performance. It proposes instead an accomplishment -based self-motivated selection, assessment, and development system that is far more effective and equitable than any than now exist.

Sharply departing from the standard theories of human behavior, this provocative volume provides scores of proven examples and innovative ideas about how to improve human performance, both at work and school. It will intrigue anyone interested in theories an d procedures for improving human performance. But it is a must for those whose business is human competence - managers - educators, psychologists, industrial engineers, and many other scientists.

About The Author
Thomas F. Gibert holds a Ph.D degree in psychology and served on the faculties of several universities, including Harvard and the University of Georgia. In 1961 he originated a system , call "amthetics." In 1967 he founded the Praxis Corporation, devoted to improving human performance in industry, government, and education. Dr. Gilbert is a recognized leader in his field and was voted the first Honorary Life Member of the National Society for Performance and Instruction.

Step 2:
Take a tour of dougmead.com to see how you can cost-effectively optimize employee work performance in your organization while improving employee attraction and employee retention.

Education and Skills Training; The Engine for Economic Development

Are you interested in what citizens and communities can do to cause successful educational reform?

Recommendation: Learn How-to Design an Exemplary Education System. See a Successful and Replicable Model using Joe Harless's model for improving education at the web site of the Central Educational Center, a national Model High School in Newnan, Coweta County, Georgia (just southwest of Atlanta on I-85 at: http://www.gacec.com/index.cfm?section=about.

If you are truly interested in what citizens and communities can do to successfully cause educational reform, then I strongly suggest you visit the Central Educational Center web site and then read, "The Eden Conspiracy"; Educating for Accomplished Citizenship by Joe Harless, ISBN 0-9665010-4. It is available on amazon.com. The above mentioned Central Educational Center Model is based on this excellent book that explains how-to cause dramatic improvement in our children's schooling. This book provides a common sense approach for local educational reform by one of the nation's leading experts in human development. Joe explains how to motivate students, how-to improve the curriculum and how-to bring about higher levels of learning for almost all students. Working together we can increase exemplary performance and better manage human resources throughout the world by supporting a better exchange between business and academia, so that the academics are putting their substantial intellectual powers and resources to work better preparing students for exemplary workforce performance.

Discover educational approaches that produce comprehensive and seminal changes in the way learning delivers business value. What Bill and Melinda Gates Want You to Know In their first interview together, Bill and Melinda Gates say they're terrified an entire generation is failing in school. Stand up to change America's school crisis. Stand Up - Oprah.com. I also recommend you read "Education' Myths" author, Jay Greene. This book was featured on 20/20 on Jan. 13, 2006 — In his special report on public education, "Stupid in America," John Stossel speaks with Jay Greene regarding; What Special Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why It Isn't So." Greene takes on the conventional wisdom that pouring more money into public schools leads to improved education. Citing national statistics on education expenditures, Greene argues that inadequate spending is not the problem behind poorly performing schools and students. Greene also rebuts some popular assumptions about the roles race and socioeconomic status play in student performance. What should be the ultimate purpose and goals of education? What are the desired student accomplishments as a result of the educational process? What student behaviors are relevant to produce the accomplishments? What is the gap between current accomplishments and the desired accomplishments? What are the causes of the gaps? What interventions are indicated? What specific content should be taught? It is important that these issues be addressed not only before embarking on educational reform, but also in the sequence listed above, because the findings of each analytical step become the input the next.

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Are you charged with improving workforce performance, reducing training costs and producing effective Corporate Skills Training & Development Curriculum?

Recommendation: Build a state-of-the-art training and development organization with the award-winning the Accomplishment-Based Curriculum Development System (ABCD). Now your training organization can design and develop training they can guarantee will work. Increase training's value and credibility in your organization. Tie training and development directly to organizational goals and improvements in productivity---a true performance-based approach to curriculum planning and training design. Joe Harless, a member of the prestigious Human Resources Hall of Fame, designed and developed these workshops that will revolutionize your business. Often referred to as the "trainer's trainer" Joe Harless has received the coveted Member For Life award from the National Society for Performance Improvement (now, The International Society for Performance Improvement). In short, he has a unique genius for solving performance problems. Establish a one-to-one link between the training and development you provide and the measurements of trainee’s job performance. Produce, as a subject-matter expert, high quality training immediately upon completion of human performance improvement training. Master essential development skills. Learn the secrets of successful curriculum development. Guarantee your training to provide job-relevant skills. Reduce training costs. Document the value of your training. Make performance measurable and observable and give a base-line from which to measure how performance has improved after training. You can quickly show how performance has improved and demonstrate the value of what you do. The Peak Performance System is perfect for e-learning media because the methodology enables you to select the best, most effective delivery media for any type of training. The Peak Performance System is extremely well suited to training delivered through technology because it enables you to break training into smaller segments which trainees can take as needed. Tailor training to your audience's needs and design training you can guarantee will work for any medium. There is no better way to acquire these skills than by attending these workshops. Become qualified to present these workshops personally to your organization.