Fixing not blaming

Both Deming and Juran urged that we use performance data for fixing, and never for blaming. The tragedies of September 11, 2001 provide us huge opportunities to learn from what happened and apply the implications for our profession in order to rethink what we do and deliver for training and performance improvement.

What can we learn? Here are six critical success factors for fixing what likely went wrong on this fatal day.

Six critical success factors for improving what we do and deliver

Here are guidelines that can make us more successful than before, and learn from the past:

1. Move out of your comfort zone--today's paradigms--and use new and widest boundaries for thinking, planning, doing, evaluating, and continuous improvement. Our comfortable paradigms have us focus on individuals and individual performance instead of placing a primary focus on what we deliver to external clients and society. Whether you are working airport screening or in a box factory, the safety and well-being of yourself and all others must be primary. “Arrive Alive” was once the logo on Florida license plates; it is good advice for trainers. . .everything we use, do, and deliver must add value for external clients and society. If you cannot track the results chain from individual jobs and tasks to the safety and well-being of all clients, then chances are they can be eliminated. No pollution, no tainting, no unsafe materials or products. Enlarge the current paradigm to adding value to all stakeholders.

2. Differentiate between ends (what) and means (how). Instead of a focus on resources and means – technologically-driven training, numbers of hours of training and development, methods of instruction – focus on the ends, results, and consequences. Shift from buying or selling training by the hour or by the cost, to a focus on results and value added. Can’t define the results and consequences? Then find something else to do. Everyone must be able to be a competent performer and add value to the external and internal clients.

3. Use all three levels of planning and results (Mega/Outcomes; Macro/Outputs; Micro/Products). There are three levels of results, and three associated levels of planning. Getting results only at one level begs the question of adding value to one’s organization and external clients. Why would you want a competent performer on any task if that task does not add value to the rest of the organization nor to the external stakeholders?

Here is the results/planning line-up. Which ones do you formally attend to? And which ones should you attend to?

Level of Result	Level of Planning	Primary focus	Example	Do you formally attend to this now?	Which one(s) will you formally attend to in the future?
Outcome	Mega	Society, external clients	Arrive alive: zero deaths from terrorism; zero harmful pollution, etc.
Output	Macro	Organization	Customer satisfaction, quarterly profits, etc.
Product	Micro	Individual or small group	Mastered training objectives, competent job performer, etc.
Process	Process	Activities, training, doing	Training, group facilitating, performance development, etc.
Input	Input	Resources – human, capital, physical	Hired associates, funds, policies, values, etc.
Evaluation and continuous improvement	Evaluation and continuous improvement	Fixing, improving, never blaming	Quality management, reengineering, etc.

Using this critical success factor we might see that something as routine as screening passengers at a commercial airport is more than how many hours of training each had, or whether or not they worked the contracted hours, but whether they were competent to catch infractions, and whether or not the passengers they screened “arrived alive.” This would require a focus on Mega to drive everything they used, did, and accomplished. Everything. The same goes for the person on the production line making truck brakes, or processing meat in a supermarket. Everything that they use, do, produce, and deliver must link Inputs, Processes, Products, and Outputs to survival.

4. Use an Ideal Vision (what kind of world, in measurable performance terms, we want for tomorrows' child) as the underlying basis for planning and continuous improvement. When we are planning anything – training to strategic or tactical plans -- we must have a focus on tomorrow’s child. Flaky? Not really. Seen a Michelin tire add recently with babies featured? Safety for today’s and tomorrow’s child. We must focus on societal value added before doing anything else. Our children and grandchildren rely on us.

5. Prepare all objectives--including the Ideal Vision and mission--to include precise statements of both where you are headed as well as the criteria for measuring when you have arrived. Everything is measurable – if we can name it (nominal scale measurement) we are measuring it. If you can’t name it, then it doesn’t exist. All objectives must define the results/performance to be accomplished. As Mager so skillfully points out “if you don’t know where you are headed, you might end up someplace else.”

6. Define "need" as a gap in results (not as insufficient levels of resources, means, or methods). Needs are not the same as wants, just as ends and means are not the same. When we define the requirements for training and performance improvement it should be based on hard data, not on intuition or conventional wisdom. When we define need as a gap between “what is” and “what should be” in results we get a triple bonus: (a) the “what should be” criteria provide our objectives, (b) the “what should be” criteria supply us with evaluation and continuous improvement dimensions: all we have to do is note the extent to which the gaps in results have been closed, and (c) we can talk directly – using performance data – to the costs and consequences of what we intend to do; we can define the costs to meet the needs (close the gaps in results) as compared to the costs to ignore the needs. Think for a moment of our most recent tragedy and hypothesize if training and security were rooted in performance based needs – hard data – or on perceptions of activities and probably loose performance standards. What did it cost us all to ignore the needs?

Another advantage of using this critical success factor is that by identifying gaps in results before selecting a “means” such as training, you can identify possible ways and means (including training) based on those that will likely meet the needs. And while we are at it, let’s apply these six critical success factors to design interventions based on science and research, and not on conventional wisdom and fad.

Getting it right this time

We can learn from our tragedies and our failures. If we don’t now base everything on the health, safety, and well being of all stakeholders we are letting both them and us down. We expect our survival to be number one on everyone else’s priority list, and so it should be on ours as well.

Kaufman, R. (2000) Mega Planning. Thousand Oaks. Ca. Sage Publishing,

Kaufman, R. (1998) Strategic thinking: A guide to identifying and solving problems. (Rev. Ed.) Washington, DC: International Society for Performance Improvement and Alexandria, VA. American Society for Training & Development.

Kaufman, R.; Thiagarajan, S.; & MacGillis, P. (1997) The Guidebook for Performance Improvement. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer/Jossey-Bass.

Roger Kaufman is professor and director, Office for Needs Assessment and Planning at Florida State University where he received a Professorial Excellence award. He is also Research Professor of Engineering Management at the Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA and Director of Roger Kaufman & Associates. Previously he has been professor of human behavior at the United States International University, professor of education at Chapman University, and taught courses in strategic planning, needs assessment, and evaluation at the University of Southern California and Pepperdine University. He was the 1983 Haydn Williams Fellow at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia. Roger serves as the Vice Chair of the Senior Research Advisory Committee for Florida Tax Watch. He earned his Ph.D. in communications from New York University, MA from Johns Hopkins University and BA from George Washington University. Before entering higher education Dr. Kaufman in senior advisory and training positions with Douglas Aircraft, US Industries, Bolt, Beranek & Newman, Martin Baltimore, and Boeing. He served two terms on the U.S. Secretary of the Navy's Advisory Board on Education and Training and continues to consult to a broad array of public and private clients around the globe. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a Fellow of the American Academy of School Psychology, and a Diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology. He was awarded the “Member for Life” designation, the highest honor of the International Society for Performance Improvement and the Thomas F. Gilbert Professional Achievement Award by that same organization. Kaufman has published 35 books, including Mega Planning, Strategic Planning Plus, and Strategic Thinking – Revised, and co-authored Useful Educational Results: Defining, Prioritizing, and Accomplishing. as well as over 200 articles on strategic planning, performance improvement, quality management and continuous improvement, needs assessment, management, and evaluation.