First Things Fast: A Handbook for Performance Analysis (Essential Knowledge Resource (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

Rossett, Allison

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787988480 ISBN 13: 9780787988487

Verlag: Pfeiffer, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

An Essential Knowledge Resource

THE WORLD OF LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE has changed significantly since the first edition of First Things Fast was published more than a decade ago. This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the best-selling classic recognizes a world chock-full of technology, economic strains, and opportunities. How do learning and performance professionals plan in this shifting context? How do they take advantage of new human and Internet-based resources? How do they bring their recommendations forward and add more value, no matter where they work? These questions are addressed throughout this new edition.

This important resource is a practical guide that is filled with job aids, design templates, and examples offering step-by-step guidance to the basics of performance analysis.

This new edition includes:

• New questions and templates that reflect the shift of learning and support from the classroom to the workplace, and the blends that provide learning and support in both environments
• Fresh approaches for using wikis, blogs, and online surveys to gather information
• Innovative ideas for tapping into the power of social networking and the possibilities presented for analysts
• Information on the critical link between analysis and evaluation and new guidelines for both activities
• A wealth of new illustrative case examples
• Insightful commentaries from successful leaders in the field who explain how they use analysis to advance individual and organizational strategy

"Allison Rossett combines thought leadership for the profession with practical guidance. This book, the second edition of a classic in the field, is filled with proven practices and ready-to-use tools making this a resource you'll use frequently."
DANA GAINES ROBINSON, COAUTHOR, PERFORMANCE CONSULTING AND STRATEGIC BUSINESS PARTNER

"What I appreciate about this book is that it is a straightforward, practical guide to planning, and it embraces new technology and the convergence of learning and work."
NANCY J. LEWIS, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER, ITT CORPORATION

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Allison Rossett is a professor of educational technology at San Diego State University and a consultant in workforce learning and performance and technology-based systems. She is the author of the best-selling Handbook of Job Aids (Pfeiffer) and Beyond the Podium (Pfeiffer), both of which are winners of the International Society for Performance Improvement's Instructional Communications award.

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The world of learning and performance has changed significantly since the first edition of First Things Fast was published more than a decade ago. This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the best-selling classic recognizes a world chock-full of technology, economic strains, and opportunities. How do learning and performance professionals plan in this shifting context? How do they take advantage of new human and Internet-based resources? How do they bring their recommendations forward and add more value, no matter where they work? These questions are addressed throughout this new edition.

This important resource is a practical guide that is filled with job aids, design templates, and examples offering step-by-step guidance to the basics of performance analysis.

This new edition includes:

• New questions and templates that reflect the shift of learning and support from the classroom to the workplace, and the blends that provide learning and support in both environments

• Fresh approaches for using wikis, blogs, and online surveys to gather information

• Innovative ideas for tapping into the power of social networking and the possibilities presented for analysts

• Information on the critical link between analysis and evaluation and new guidelines for both activities

• A wealth of new illustrative case examples

• Insightful commentaries from successful leaders in the field who explain how they use analysis to advance individual and organizational strategy

"Allison Rossett combines thought leadership for the profession with practical guidance. This book, the second edition of a classic in the field, is filled with proven practices and ready-to-use tools making this a resource you'll use frequently." -Dana Gaines Robinson, Coauthor, Performance Consulting ANDSTRATEGIC BUSINESS PARTNER

"What I appreciate about this book is that it is a straightforward, practical guide to planning, and it embraces new technology and the convergence of learning and work." -Nancy J. Lewis, Vice President and Chief Learning Officer, ITT Corporation

Aus dem Klappentext

An Essential Knowledge Resource

THE WORLD OF LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE has changed significantly since the first edition of First Things Fast was published more than a decade ago. This thoroughly revised and updated second edition of the best-selling classic recognizes a world chock-full of technology, economic strains, and opportunities. How do learning and performance professionals plan in this shifting context? How do they take advantage of new human and Internet-based resources? How do they bring their recommendations forward and add more value, no matter where they work? These questions are addressed throughout this new edition.

This important resource is a practical guide that is filled with job aids, design templates, and examples offering step-by-step guidance to the basics of performance analysis.

This new edition includes:

• New questions and templates that reflect the shift of learning and support from the classroom to the workplace, and the blends that provide learning and support in both environments
• Fresh approaches for using wikis, blogs, and online surveys to gather information
• Innovative ideas for tapping into the power of social networking and the possibilities presented for analysts
• Information on the critical link between analysis and evaluation and new guidelines for both activities
• A wealth of new illustrative case examples
• Insightful commentaries from successful leaders in the field who explain how they use analysis to advance individual and organizational strategy

"Allison Rossett combines thought leadership for the profession with practical guidance. This book, the second edition of a classic in the field, is filled with proven practices and ready-to-use tools making this a resource you'll use frequently."
DANA GAINES ROBINSON, COAUTHOR, PERFORMANCE CONSULTING AND STRATEGIC BUSINESS PARTNER

"What I appreciate about this book is that it is a straightforward, practical guide to planning, and it embraces new technology and the convergence of learning and work."
NANCY J. LEWIS, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER, ITT CORPORATION

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First Things Fast

A Handbook for Performance AnalysisBy Allison Rossett

John Wiley & Sons

Copyright © 2009 Allison Rossett
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7879-8848-7

Chapter One

Introduction

Nancy Lewis, then IBM vice president for sales and on demand learning and now the executive in charge of learning for ITT, contributed to the LearningTown blog on April 11, 2008:

Business leaders know that the rate of information change is accelerating, growing faster than our ability to consume it. The result being that we will all have skill gaps, all the time, and that skill gaps will be a constant state of life in the future. We also know that our roles are becoming as complex as the knowledge we work with. There will never be enough time to learn everything we need to learn. There is such a consistent and rapid churn of the skills and knowledge required to maintain job performance that learning can no longer be provided as a set of events. This is the new challenge for learning: enabling people to capitalize on new technologies, discoveries and business insights, to be first to the marketplace with new solutions that exceed our clients' needs and expectations. At the heart, therefore, the essence of any company's ability to adapt and grow is its ability to learn. And that involves new ways of thinking about an approach to learning.

What Lewis is touting is not computers, although technology, of course, plays a starring role in the delivery of learning and support. Lewis's focus is learning in juxtaposition with the work and workplace: "We looked at where learning actually takes place most of the time. It's in the workplace, not in the classroom. We learn naturally on the job. We learn by doing, by solving problems. There will always be a need for formal training, but it will likely be much more in direct support of the capabilities that cannot be learned in the workplace."

Placing learning and references closer to the work is brilliant, except when it is the wrong learning or references. Executives favor such an approach, especially in harsh economic times. Employees reject programs that are extraneous, bloated, or obsolete. That's true in the classroom and online. The big difference is the instructor, present for face-to-face experiences. Instructors typically fix instruction when it is not right. An instructor adds an example to make it more relevant. Another reminds the employee of all that he already knows. Yet another instructor provides an opportunity to tackle a problem that is within the student's abilities, to ensure a success experience. And another links the example to the concept, when the students' faces are blank. Finally, a savvy instructor would recognize when a class, as now written, ignores a critical new product or geopolitical reality. She makes fixes to ensure that the class is timely.

When we diminish instructor centrality in favor of on-demand and workplace-based resources and experiences, more responsibility falls on us. We must be certain about the resonance of our programs. What do our people need? What is top priority? What is already known? For what do they clamor? What will add value? What must they know by heart? What can they seek as they need it? It is performance analysis that answers these questions.

In April 2008, Delta and Northwest Airlines announced their intentions to merge. A Delta learning leader, in a personal email that very morning, shared feelings about the merger. She expressed enthusiasm for it, and closed by remarking that she now needs to get her arms around what Northwest learning is all about and what their people require. She has to figure out how to make this merger work at 550 mph. How does she gain insight into their people, challenges, and programs? What should she do first? What next? And how does she engage colleagues in the process, so that her ideas are not just Delta ideas or habits? It is performance analysis that answers her questions.

A former student provided another example. After a dozen years in training and development in financial services, he reports that he is now, finally, getting more control over the "juicy" projects. "I want to use technology to meet the needs of the far-flung IT community. When their executive asked me to look for ways to improve awareness about system security, I immediately thought about Second Life." Why was Second Life (http://secondlife.com/) such a natural here? I asked. He had reasons that began to bring me around, such as the interest the approach would generate in a skeptical audience and the immersive and vivid nature of the experience. But how would he direct their experiences on his corporate island? How would he rivet their attention, since other even "juicier" opportunities lurked on nearby islands? Given all that could be done, how would he decide what they see, tackle, and do? It is performance analysis that answers his questions.

You could be at IBM or Delta, or even contemplating the design of your corporate island in Second Life. Perhaps your organization is rolling out a new product. Or maybe you are tasked with getting more value from the current learning management system or with squeezing cost out of the current enterprise. Or consider the executive who wants assurance that what his people are studying in class will transfer to the manufacturing floor. Then there is the sales leader who notes that great things are going on across the world and laments that the rest of the salesforce rarely profits from these breakthroughs. Your job is to embrace these requirements as opportunities and to customize programs to ensure performance and results. How do you make that happen? No surprise. The answer is performance analysis.

Where once human resources and training professionals enjoyed a niche defined by familiar activities, such as offering classes or facilitating meetings, now there are urgent expectations about results, speed to competence, benefits and efficiencies from technologies, and eagerness to distribute smarts everywhere, accessible where and when needed.

These expectations define us by customers and causes, not by history, habit, or job title. They lead to tailored services. They lead to data and perceptions gathered from associates, managers, experts, leaders, and benchmarking groups. They lead to solutions enlightened by causes and drivers. They lead to uncovering data in unexpected places, including blogs and wikis. They lead to cobbling together solution systems from across the organization, including assets and experiences that compel attention over time and geography.

The basis for all of this is performance analysis. An effective performance analysis delivers the information and support you need to chart a fresh, tailored approach.

Is This Book for You?

This book is for you if you've found yourself thinking or saying,

I don't know where to start.

I don't know what to do.

I must get it right or I fear they won't use it.

What is performance analysis?

Why should I spend time on performance analysis, when my clients want ACTION?

What would competence look like, really look like?

A certain amount of analysis is critical, I guess. OK, what's the minimum?

They've reorganized, and now I'm in this unit called "client relationships," and we're supposed to be doing performance consulting. What should we do? How might analysis help here?

How do I avoid analysis-paralysis?

How do I get a better fix on what to do first, second, and next?

It's all about technology around here now. How does the shift to technology and independent learning influence the way we plan?

We have online communities, wikis, blogs ... should I use them in my analysis? How would I do that?

This analysis is just a small part of my job. I don't have time for all of this analysis. What's the least I can do and still derive value?

Whom do I ask? What do I ask?

What's analysis got to do with evaluation?

My customer says she knows what she needs and that it's not analysis. How can I make a case with her for study prior to action?

They want some courses, and one customer wants scenario-based e-learning. But I have my doubts about whether an isolated course, in the classroom or through high technology, is going to solve this problem. How can I make them see this?

The challenges are numerous: a world economic crisis; skepticism from clients; time pressures; the strength of habits; unfamiliar roles in changing organizations; cultural, language, and time zone differences; uneven technology platforms; and expectations regarding cost recovery and collaborations across units. Whereas the traditional roles of human resources and training were functional, tactical, and blissfully familiar, this new world of performance analysis, consultation services, and solution systems is more fluid and strategic. It demands more of you. The changes won't be easy.

That paragraph ends the sympathy. From here on we talk about how to think about and succeed in these new roles and services, and we'll focus on analysis as the strategy to enable you to do just that.

This book is written for human resources and training professionals who are eager to choose solutions based on the situation, not on habits and inclinations; who are interested in analysis prior to action; who seek to consult with line organizations to establish field-based cases for their recommendations; and who are operating under time constraints. Many are called trainers by their organizations. Some are internal or external organizational developers and process reengineers. Many call themselves instructional designers or performance consultants or even performance technologists. Some have another position entirely, but find themselves tasked with or attracted to solving problems. Still others are human resources generalists. What all share is a desire to shift from predetermined activities and events to consultation and customized solutions. They are working to establish partnerships. Their efforts begin with performance analysis.

Performance Analysis and Needs Assessment?

In the past I've written about needs assessment in a way that defines it as a large, overarching concept that is arguably synonymous with good human resources planning. Although I still hold by that definition, I was, I fear, overly optimistic about the welcome that such a demanding process would receive in the field. As practical experience and numerous studies of practice have shown, my own included, needs assessment is honored more in theory than in practice. What to do? Do we abandon this critical planning simply because so many report that they fail to do much of it? I don't think so.

I'm no longer convinced it is helpful to define needs assessment so broadly, because when you do, a commitment to needs assessment will necessitate the expenditure of significant resources up front. Professionals run up against a wall of resistance when they attempt to gather large quantities of information from many sources at the get-go. Instead, I'm proposing that we reduce the daunting size of the effort by carving the planning process into more manageable and iterative bite sizes: one swift, targeted bite up front and then subsequent mouthfuls of assessment for subsequent associated programs.

It's hard to argue with the hundreds who've said in one way or another, "Sure, I'm for assessment. I just don't get to do it. What else do you have for me? I want to make better decisions, do some planning, but not jump into so much study." What I have for this typical professional is performance analysis, that smaller, focused bite.

Performance analysis, then, becomes the front end of the front end. It is an elegant and swift look at the situation. It matches changes happening in human resources and training organizations where a group of professionals, who might be called relationship consultants, requirements consultants, or performance consultants, are tasked with facing the customer and helping them get what they need to achieve their goals. They continuously scan and respond, turning projects over to other human resources and training professionals, depending on the challenge or opportunity. Their job is to swiftly figure things out, as the late, great Ron Zemke put it in his classic text, Figuring Things Out (Zemke & Kramlinger, 1982). What these professionals are doing is performance analysis, a precursor to the substantial planning involved in the needs assessment associated with the production of a particular solution, like a class or a reenginered policy or a multimedia program.

Only after it is certain that a training, coaching, or information solution is appropriate does the organization make the investment in more lengthy, substantive training needs assessment. Table 1.1 is a comparison of performance analysis and training needs assessment.

In Table 1.1, note the difference in why, when, and how. In performance analysis, we are attempting to make a preliminary sketch of the opportunity, to figure out what is involved in serving a customer, and then to bring the necessary partners together to collaborate on producing and delivering the solution system. Performance analysis is what we do before we invest in needs assessment or what we can finally, accurately dub training needs assessment. Once we have determined that education, training, or information will contribute, the lengthier training needs assessment can commence.

Performance analysis guarantees doing the right things. Training needs assessment is about doing those right things right.

This book focuses on performance analysis. My previous book, Training Needs Assessment (1987), covers the more extensive assessment efforts in more detail. Please see Chapter Two for more about these two concepts.

There are precedents for chopping the front end into targeted and related parts, so that what you learn in the first phase enlightens subsequent efforts. General practitioners, for example, do it when a patient presents with a problem such as fatigue. They ask questions to determine likely causes and then turn to more extensive testing to confirm educated hunches. Subsequent contact with specialists, and related intensive diagnostics, are based on that initial once-over.

Another example is the early opportunity analysis conducted by entrepreneurs. In real estate development, an experienced developer quickly reviews the characteristics of a potential site to identify the issues most likely to be fatal to the project. Using as little time and money as possible, the developer confirms the "deal-killer" issue and moves on to another site, or finds that the issue is tolerable and moves on to the next potential deal killer for that site. Only when the largest, easiest-to-investigate killers are retired does the developer invest "real" money and time in the project.

Perhaps you have some questions now. In Table 1.2, I anticipate some of your questions and answer them.

How Does the Book Work?

In this chapter and in Chapters Two and Three, I define performance analysis and explain why, why now, why you, and why do it quickly. I present the performance analysis basics, along with examples, job aids, and templates. What questions should you ask? To whom should you address those questions? Why do it this way? The next two chapters answer those questions.

Chapter Four focuses on handling typical situations, such as a request for support in the introduction of new software or the need to plan to ensure that engineers' skills are contemporary. The chapter highlights four kinds of requirements: (1) a rollout of a new system, approach, or perspective; (2) a problem with performance or results; (3) development for a particular group of people; and (4) strategic planning. We look at strategies for carrying out performance analysis linked to these standard, familiar requests for assistance.

Chapter Five is all about speed. It describes strategies for putting the pedal to the metal and reviews ways of capturing useful data without large numbers of sources or lengthy processes.

Chapter Six acknowledges that performance analysis is a planning process with two primary purposes. The first is to figure out what needs to be done to serve the client and organization. The second is to establish relationships in the organization and readiness for subsequent interventions. In this chapter, while reviewing interviews, focus groups, observation, and surveys as methods for performance analysis, we concentrate on the perspectives of executives, managers, employees, experts, and solution partners during analysis. What we'll see is that they are not usually as keen on analysis as we are.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from First Things Fastby Allison Rossett Copyright © 2009 by Allison Rossett. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pfeiffer
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0787988480
• ISBN 13: 9780787988487
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Auflage: 2
• Anzahl der Seiten: 310
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar