Chapter 1
Human Performance Technology
('Human Performance Technology' is also often referred to just 'Performance Technology.' For the purposes of this toolkit there will be no distinction made between the two.)
What Is HPT?
"HPT is the practice of maximizing worker performance in an organization. Its practitioners are systematic, use rigorous scientific methods, are accountable for their own performance, and strive to add value to their client organization."
Maximizing worker performance to add value to the organization involves identifying an organization’s goals and values and discovering if those goals and values align with the actual performance of the members of the organization. If they do align then the HPT Practitioners (HPTers) should take measures to ensure that they stay that way. If they do not align, then HPTers endeavor to discover why and use systematic and possibly scientific processes to create solutions to remedy the misalignment.
Aligning worker performance with their organizational goals is all well and good but there is no sense in prescribing interventions that cost more than they will save in performance improvement. So, a does of pragmatism must always be taken with each performance technology engagement.
Few people care to listen to the wheel that does not squeak, but a performance technologist does well to ensure that organizations working procedures are not hindered in their continuation when prescribing interventions. That is, HPTers are, or should be, careful not create subsequent performance problems through the implementation of an intervention to the initial performance problem.
The deliverable that a performance technologist delivers generally comes in the form of the before mentioned intervention. This intervention is designed to close the gap between desired worker performance and actual worker performance. No intervention (or nearly none) could be highly effective, systematic, or scientific, without careful analysis. The analysis is the process of accounting for all of the variables of a given performance situation. Deeper than that, it is the very process of identifying what the variables might even be.
The overarching goal of HPT is to contribute to the improvement of human performance where ever it may be found. However, the pragmatic application of HPT is generally found in businesses or other organizations that employ or make use of individual workers who are not performing to a perceived potential. The difference between the perceived potential and the workers actual performance is the essential focus of the HPTer and it is the successful closer of this gap with minimum cost and resource that is the goal of the HPTer. And when the said gap is actually closed and in turn contributes a positive value to the subject organization then an instance of the goal of HPT is met.
The process of conducting analysis and designing scientific interventions is facilitated by systematically following established performance technology models. However, during the process of analysis it may be discovered that some established prescriptive intervention may be suitable.
Established Definitions. Please note the hyper linked sources:
“Human Performance Technology (HPT) is a professional field of study and application, the main purpose of which is to engineer systems that allow people and organizations to perform in ways that they and all stakeholders value.”
Stolovitch and Keeps Forward of Handbook of HPT third edition.
“What Is HPT?
Human Performance Technology (HPT), a systematic approach to improving productivity and competence, uses a set of methods and procedures -- and a strategy for solving problems -- for realizing opportunities related to the performance of people. More specific, it is a process of selection, analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of programs to most cost-effectively influence human behavior and accomplishment. It is a systematic combination of three fundamental processes: performance analysis, cause analysis, and intervention selection, and can be applied to individuals, small groups, and large organizations.
How Does HPT Work?
Human performance technology is a set of methods and procedures, and a strategy for solving problems, for realizing opportunities related to the performance of people. It can be applied to individuals, small groups, and large organizations. It is, in reality, a systematic combination of three fundamental processes: performance analysis, cause analysis, and intervention selection. “
From: http://ispi.org/
Examples
Human performance problems can manifest themselves in all sorts of ways. An obvious way would be where someone new to a job does not know how to do the job so class room training, OJT, or mentoring may be necessary as an intervention. A less obvious way would like this example of the Acme Bicycle Factory.
Theoretical Foundations
There are a large number of theoretical principles that HPT draws from for a foundation. The following are only a few that are most useful:
Empiricism
"In philosophy generally, empiricism is a theory of knowledge emphasizing the role of experience, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas, while discounting the notion of innate ideas."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism
HPT is a systematic and scientific process. As it is scientific it must rely heavily on the foundational scientific theory Empiricism. A theory of knowledge the gist of empiricism is that that things are verifiable and if not verifiable not practically real if real at all. This theory is in contrast to Rationalism which posits that knowledge of things comes through a logical process.
Behaviorism
"Behaviorism (also called learning perspective) is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do — including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. The school of psychology maintains that behaviors as such can be described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to hypothetical constructs such as the mind. Behaviorism comprises the position that all theories should have observational correlates but that there are no philosophical differences between publicly observable processes (such as actions) and privately observable processes (such as thinking and feeling)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism
A psychological theory which reduces performers to behaviors. Behaviors can be put on command through a process of conditioning.
Cognitive Information Processing
"Cognitive psychology is the school of psychology that examines internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language. It had its foundations in the Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka, and in the work of Jean Piaget, who provided a theory of stages/phases that describe children's cognitive development. Cognitive psychologists are interested in how people understand, diagnose, and solve problems, concerning themselves with the mental processes which mediate between stimulus and response. Cognitive theory contends that solutions to problems take the form of algorithms—rules that are not necessarily understood but promise a solution, or heuristics—rules that are understood but that do not always guarantee solutions. In other instances, solutions may be found through insight, a sudden awareness of relationships."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive
This theory suggest that human thinking (cognition) works when information come in through the senses, moves to short term memory, but short term memory has limit space so then things can be moved to long term memory. This is structure is important to instructional design because it gives suggestions about how much information can be presented to the short term memory before overload and how to facilitate moving things from short term memory to long term memory.
Constructivism
"Constructivism is a learning theory that argues humans construct meaning from current knowledge structures. These arguments about the nature of human learning that guide constructivist learning theories and teaching methods of education. Constructivism values developmentally appropriate facilitator-supported learning that is initiated and directed by the learner."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism
Learners construct there own world of knowledge.
Cultural Relativism
"Cultural relativism is the principle that ones beliefs and activities should be interpreted in terms of ones own culture. This principle was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by students. Boas himself did not use the term as such, but the term became common among anthropologists after Boas' death in 1942. The first use of the term was in the journal American Anthropologist in 1948; the term itself represents how Boas' students summarized their own synthesis of many of the principles Boas taught."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism
Each culture has it's own norms and morays and system of right and wrong.
Objectivism
"Moral objectivism or moderate moral realism is the position that certain acts are objectively right or wrong, independent of human opinion."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_objectivism
There is an objective external world that learners need to discover. This perspective is critical to understand when dealing with some kinds of scientific study.
Logical Positivism
Logical positivism (later and more accurately called logical empiricism) is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism, the idea that our knowledge includes a component that is not derived from observation.
A philosophical "movement" that influences scientists today. Logical positivism is mostly the product of the "Vienna Circle" who were strongly influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's early work primarily the Tractatus. It is a stronger version of the philosophy Positivism.
Not necessarily a founding theory of HPT but important to consider in light of the other theories is Rationalism, which "...is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism
Practical Foundations/History
“HPT is a derivative field that for over a half century has evolved from a number of disciplines, such as psychology, communications, neuroscience, management science, information science, economics, ergonomics, and measurements and evaluation. It is also the progeny of a number of applied fields, such as instructional technology, human resource development, organizational development, and industrial engineering.”
Stolovitch and Keeps Forward of Handbook of HPT third edition.
HPT can trace some early roots to theories about learning like Skinner's behaviorism, and scientific worker improvement efforts Thorndike's Time and motion. Other psychological theories have influenced HPT like CIP and more recently Constructivism. And a multitude of interventions are now considered for improving performance like providing incentives, or data, or better tools.
HPT Compared to Other Organizational Improvement Initiatives
Organizational Development
“At the core of OD is the concept of an organization, defined as two or more people working together toward one or more shared goals. Development in this context is the notion that an organization may become more effective over time at achieving its goals.
"OD is a long range effort to improve organization's problem solving and renewal processes, particularly through more effective and collaborative management of organization culture-with specific emphasis on the culture of formal workteams-with the assistance of a change agent or catalyst and the use of the theory and technology of applied behavioral science including action research"”
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_development
OD has a larger scope than HPT. Where HPT looks at the workers, OD looks at the entire organization.
Human Resources
“Human resources is a term in which many organizations describe the combination of traditionally administrative personnel functions with performance management, employee relations and resource planning. The field draws upon concepts developed in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Human resources has at least two related interpretations depending on context. The original usage derives from political economy and economics, where it was traditionally called labor, one of four factors of production. The more common usage within corporations and businesses refers to the individuals within the firm, and to the portion of the firm's organization that deals with hiring, firing, training, and other personnel issues. This article addresses both definitions.
The objective of Human Resources is to maximize the return on investment from the organization's human capital and minimize financial risk. It is the responsibility of human resource managers to conduct these activities in an effective, legal, fair, and consistent manner. Human resource management serves these key functions:Recruitment Strategy Planning
Hiring Processes(recruitment)
Performance Evaluation and Management
Promotions
Redundancy
Industrial and Employee Relations
Record keeping of all personel data.
Compensation, pensions, bonuses etc in liaison with Payroll
Confidential advice to internal 'customers' in relation to problems at work.”
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resources
Human Resources deals with much of the management of the day to day routine of workers and their performance. They focus much more on the hiring, personal data records, and personal incentives, than does the HPT practitioner.
For Further Reading: Forward to the Third Edition by Harold D. Stolovitch, and Erica J. Keeps
For Further Reading: Human Performance Fundamentals by James A. Pershing
For Further Reading: The Performance Architect's Essential Guide to the Performance Technology Landscape
For Further Reading: The Origins and Evolution of Human Performance Technology by Camille Ferond