Dave's Whiteboard

In an online conversation, I found myself again quoting Joe Harless. In this case, the quote was from a March 1975 interview with Training magazine.  I haven’t found this online anywhere, so thought I’d summarize a bit here.

A little background: Harless coined the term front-end analysis.  As he wrote in a workshop guide, to help our client achieve its business or organizational goals:

We begin at the end and work backwards in the basic progression:

1. We first find out what goals are not being achieved satisfactorily, or what the new goals are when they are set by the client.
2. We then find out what accomplishment is not being produced satisfactorily that is causing the goal not to be met.
3. We then find out what behaviors are not being obtained that cause the deficient accomplishment.
4. Then, and only then, can we determine which of the influences need to be manipulated.

The process just described is called Front-End Analysis.

The Training interview asked if FEA were “just the Joe Harless shtick.”  Harless replied that it was real “if you define real as having a definite set of procedures…and data and case histories” along with people who are applying these things.

Front-end analysis began with the realization that we could produce excellent training packages, ones that pleased not only the developer but the client.  And yet follow-up evaluation ( “which…we jokingly called rear-end analysis” ) revealed that, as often as not, skills didn’t transfer to the job.

So Harless wondered why.  “Being devotees of the scientific method, we advanced certain hypotheses… [And] we began testing these hypotheses.”

To Harless and his collaborators, rear-end analysis asks, “Why didn’t the training produce the intended result?”  Front-end analysis asks three other questions:

• What are the symptoms that a problem exists?
• What is the performance problem producing those symptoms?
• What is the value of solving that problem?

And that’s where the quote comes from:

Training: Value in terms of what?

Harless: In terms of money. Front-end analysis is about money first and foremost.  So is training.  If not, you’re baby-sitting or doing psychotherapy.

Harless said this as an aside to the main theme of his interview.  Even so, this is a lodestone for anyone working in organizational learning.  I agree that the individual needs to have some personal investment in order to learn effectively on the job.  She wants to raise her skills, or master a new task, or prepare for a new position, or gain satisfaction from resolving new challenges.

Those are her variables.  The organization has variables as well; the relationship between the two sets is an effort to balance the work-equation.  How can those skills, those tasks, those challenges make sense for her in the organization’s context?  “Is it worth  spending X to achieve Y?” Solve for the organization.  Solve for your personal goals.

I’m not trying to reduce this purely to dollars, and I don’t think Harless was, either.  (The same people who get nit-picky about “ROI for training” are strangely silent when a merger like Daimler-Chrysler–financially analyzed, you’d think, to a fare-thee-well–ends up vaporizing billions of dollars.)

When Harless says, “Value in terms of money,” I see it as shorthand.  Money is the most common and most convertible indicator of value in group activity.  You can choose other indicators; you just have to work harder.

1975 was fairly early in the history of performance improvement, though I don’t think we’ve yet reached the Golden Age.  Here’s the Reverend Harless preaching on a related theme:

You know, trainers are forever going around looking for respectability.  They’re always asking, “How can we sell management on the idea of training?”

Well, the answer is, you don’t.  You sell management on the benefits of solving human performance problems. You make it clear to management that you are there to avoid training when it’s not cost-effective.

That’s how you get to be a hero.  That’s how you get to be respectable…That’s how you avoid being stuck off in some personnel department somewhere.

By the way, Guy Wallace’s Pursuing Performance blog has a 2008 video interview with Joe Harless:

“Almost always, the client came to us requesting the development of some kind of training intervention… [in a typical situation, the workers] already knew how to detect and correct…defects….They were not doing so because…they were being paid for the quantity of production rather than the quality of the production.”

A recent interview with Dr. Peter J. Pronovost dealt with safer ways to care for patients in hospitals.  Pronovost is the medical director for the Quality and Safety Research Group at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

The interview’s worth reading on its own merits.  I saw in it good examples of performance analysis and efforts to improve performance–with relative few attempts to train people out of non-training problems.

For example, for cardiac catheterization, Hopkins had an infection rate of 11 per 1,000 procedures.  According to Pronovost, at the time that “put us in the worst 10% of the country.”

Here’s a diagram I created to illustrate some influences on performance:

And here are points that Pronovost makes:

• Hopkins developed a checklist to standardize what to do before catheterization (wash hands, clean skin with chlorhexidine, drape the patient, etc.).  To me, this is support for item 3 above.
• Supplies, which had been stored in as many as eight places, were prepped in a cath cart–with someone assigned to make sure it was stocked and handy.  Item 2, equipment and materials.
• The hospital asked nurses to remind doctors to wash their hands–and empowered nurses to stop procedures if this didn’t happen.  Item 8 (standards) and item 9 (feedback) — and, you could argue, item 7 (consequences).

Note also that the Hopkins project defined a specific problem (a high rate of infection), analyzed likely causes, chose action based on those causes, and measured the results.

Pronovost forcefully describes another barrier to performance: workplace culture:

As at many hospitals, we had dysfunctional teamwork because of an exceedingly hierarchal culture…

…in every hospital in America, patients die because of hierarchy. The way doctors are trained, the experiential domain is seen as threatening and unimportant. Yet, a nurse or a family member may be with a patient for 12 hours in a day, while a doctor might only pop in for five minutes.

I mention this not to single out doctors but to emphasize that performance problems usually have multiple causes.  Some you can address in a straightforward fashion (rethinking where to keep the supplies).  Others, you have to keep working at.  In commercial aviation, use of preflight checklists is maintained not only by regulations but by the active support of those who use them: it’s not smarter or more efficient to try memorizing the checklist.  In fact, it’s seen as counterproductive.

(Note what the Skout Group says about workplace culture–and checklists–in terms of USAir 1549, the plane that Sullenberger and Skiles managed to set down in the Hudson River last year, with no loss of life.)

Back to the hospital: isn’t there some need for training?

I couldn’t say; Pronovost’s interview doesn’t have enough detail.  It could be that some hospital staff need training in preparing for catheterization.  If that’s the case, I suspect that inside the generalization of “preparing for catheterization,” there are distinct subtasks: identify and obtain the supplies, prep yourself, prep the patient, assist (or be assisted by) a specialist, and so on.

And perhaps there’s a meta-skill: make sure the individual assigned to this task can first demonstrate an acceptable level of skill.  In other words, something like “we expect you learned this in nursing school (or wherever); here are our standards; we’ll observe you and tell you how you did.”

I don’t know that I’d put the necessary culture change under “training.” I’m pretty sure the label is less important than the goal: having doctors (most not hospital employees) and hospital staff work together to reduce the rate of preventable infection.

Word of the day: nosocomial, meaning “occurring in a hospital.” I came across it in this 2001 CDC report, The Impact of Hospital-Acquired Bloodstream Infections.  Its low estimate for life-threatening bloodstream infections acquired in the hospital is 87,500 per year.  The low estimate of deaths from these bloodstream infections: 8,750.

(And bloodstream infections are estimated at 10% of all nosocomial infection.)

Last week, I found myself in a couple of discussions about the difference between training and learning.  I only took one philosophy course in college, and later on I hollowed out the textbook to hide a gag gift, so it’s clear I’m not that contemplative on this issue.

To oversimplify, many people in more traditional training jobs felt strongly that there is such a thing as “training” and that it has the potential for great value.  Other people, by and large on the you-manage-your-own-learning side, seemed to place little value on structured training as such.

Although I doubt most participants intended it, you could interpret the divergent views as “this is important work I’m doing that helps people become more productive” versus “get out of your rut.”

Maybe not a rut, but at least a well-worn path.  I’ve spent a lot of time in that corporate-training path: 7 years at Amtrak, 18 at GE, and much of my consultant career since.  Usually I’m far from the executive suite, so I have some sympathy for challenges that first-line and middle managers face together with their work groups.

Which is why, over and over, I recommend Robert F. Mager‘s What Every Manager Should Know about Training.  Not just to clients (though I’ve even sent the book as a gift when I thought it would be well received) but to the corporate trainers supporting them.

It’s not a scholarly book, nor a thick one; you could probably read the 140 pages in two hours. But in that space, Bob Mager works hard to get managers out of the training-as-dosage mythology.

• Rule 1: Training is appropriate only when two conditions are present:
  • There is something people don’t know how to do, and
  • They need to be able to do it.
• Rule 2: If they already know how, more training won’t help.
• Rule 3: Skill alone is not enough to guarantee performance.
• Rule 4: You can’t store training.
  • Use it or lose it.
• Rule 5: Trainers can guarantee skill, but they can’t guarantee on-the-job performance.
• Rule 6: Only managers, not trainers, can be held accountable for on-the-job performance.

Mager: “If training is only a means to an end, what is the end toward which it strives?  It’s performance.”  Someone familiar with concepts like ISPI’s human performance technology model (links to a PDF document) recognizes exactly what Mager’s doing: smuggling performance improvement into the organization.  He’s just hidden it in a plain brown wrapper that’s labeled TRAINING.

He was clever in choosing the title, because I’d argue the majority of people who supervise or manage in organizations use “training,” at least in casual conversation, to mean a whole complex of things related to getting people to produce valuable results on the job.  Instead of trying to convert them to performance-improvement or informal-learning jargon, Mager starts where these managers are likely to start.  Then he builds on their likely experience in other dimensions of work to help them see how training (as a structured approach toward helping people acquite skills they don’t have) is one part of overall performance.

In the chapter, Where the Magic Goes In, Mager addresses another concern managers have:

Instead of asking, “How long will it take to develop my course?” you might consider asking:

What can you do for me with the lead time I’ve got?…

For example, if [the training department has] only two days for training development, the most useful thing they can do is to verify whether training is a valid solution, and to verify which solutions will have the greatest impact on the problem.

If the trainers have time to do one more thing, a task analysis would be the most useful action.  These analyses can be turned into checklists in a matter of minutes, and the checklists can be given immediately to the instructors…and to the trainees, to show…what competent performers can do….

If there is time to do one more thing, trainers can derive the objectives of the instruction and then draft skill checks by which instructional success can be measured…

…Which, by the way, isn’t a bad way to think about any sort of guidance you’d like to provide other people.

My driver’s ed instructor told my class:

You never have the right of way.
You can only yield the right of way.

Recalling this precept got me thinking about driver education / driver training, and that got me thinking about how people have very different readings for “training,” “education,” and “learning.”

Learning to drive is a good example of a complex skill (the kind van Merrienboër and Kirschner grappled with in Ten Steps to Complex Learning).  We tend to think we know what the outcome of the education or training will be: a good driver.

But what’s that?

On the formal side, it’s really about passing requirements.  If you’re an adult who moves to Maryland, for instance,  you have to:

• Pass a vision test
• Have had an out-of-state license within the past year (no suspensions)

And if your out-of-state license expired a year ago, you have to take “the knowledge and skills tests,” which I take to mean a road test and what was once known as a written test.

I’ve been driving for more than 40 years and have had licenses in four states, but I don’t recall taking more than one road test.  Not that I’m eager to do so, but you do get the impression that if you pass it once, still drive, and haven’t lost your license, you’re doing okay.

Some of what vM&K would call constituent skills for driving are recurrent ones–how to start the car, how to stop, how to steer, how to recognize signals and respond to them.  But there are many non-recurrent skills (things we do differently in each situation).  The other day I was exiting a strip-mall parking lot, wanting to turn right onto the highway.  An oncoming car on that highway had its right turn signal on.

Did that mean he’d be turning into the lot I was exiting?  How could I tell?  How could I help a novice driver figure that out?

My old instructor’s advice about right of way was a kind schema or mental model, like the two-second rule–one way to help new learners acquire cognitive strategies.

In writing about this, I’m seeing more clearly that there’s also an overlap of stakeholders: the general public (represented by the state) wants the roads to be safe; new drivers want to be able to drive; parents want their children to drive safely.

They might not even agree on the outcome.  Is it “status as skilled driver” or simply “holder of a driver’s license?” Is “skilled” the same as “safe?”

(I can answer that one: no.  Just take a drive through heavy traffic with someone who prides himself on what a skillful driver he is.)

Maryland’s Motor Vehicle Adminstration publishes a skills log and practice guide “to help the new drives gain valuable experience in operating a motor vehicle in a variety of conditions and highway environments.”  Maryland now requires 60 hours of supervised driving prior to taking the tests, with 10 of those hours at night.  The parent, guardian, or mentor of the new driver must sign a statement attesting to this, in addition to the 6 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction in the mandatory driver education course.

I like the guide (other than the mid-60s bureaucratic tone of the writing).  A “planning guide” (on the right; click for a larger version) summarizes skills; individual sections amplify them with descriptions, examples, and checklists.

Because of the state’s interest in having competent drivers, it makes sense for the state to have created this.  Is 60 hours the right amount?  Are these skills the right skills?  Will parents or guardians follow the guide, or simply certify that they had?

I can’t say–and, frankly, neither can you.  This is a complex skill; there’s no one right answer.  I think you can make a case that most of the skills in the guide are basic ones for a competent driver.  At the same time, no test is going to guarantee that a new driver, or even an experienced one, will never have an accident.  (I’d settle at times for “will not talk on the phone while driving.”)

How can people be more productive while working on complex tasks?  One approach involves a driver, a navigator, and a pomodoro.

In Sunday’s New York Times, Jim Remsik describes a way that programmers at Hashrocket (a web development company) write software.  (Full article: For Writing Software, A Buddy System.)

The quick summary: two programmers sit side by side.  One (the driver) writes the code.  The other (the navigator) checks, critiques, and offers suggestions.

As the code’s being written.

Remsik says that when senior and junior programmers work together, the junion person might start as the driver, “which may encourage the senior person to become a better teacher.”

Hashmark finds that the driver/navigator system increases productivity.  The collaborators not only switch roles (you don’t drive all the time) but also partners.  The programmers refer to that as “promiscuous pairing.”

As Remsik says, “People have different talents, and this way the expertise is spread around.”

Working like this can be exhausting, he says.  I think that’d be even more the case if you don’t get along that well with your partner, at least initially.  The fatigue factor is one reason that Hashmark uses the Pomodoro Technique.

Briefly, that involves breaking tasks into small chunks and working steadily for 25 minutes.  After that, you take a break–even if you’re ready to keep going.  At Hashmark, the phrase to encourage  driver and navigator to take that break is, “Respect the tomato.”

(Pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato.  Here’s a one-page summary of the technique; you can find out more at Francesco Cirillo’s site, The Pomodoro Technique.)

I spend a lot of time working on my own, and sometimes wish I did have a close collaborator.  I benefit from having someone to consider possibilities with, although I’d hate to debate serial commas or how to phrase feedback, time after time.

The pomodoro notion intrigues me–instead of saying, “I’ve gotta spend a good three hours on this,” which can sound like a sentence, the approach sounds more like “Get Thing A done, take a breath, then move on to Thing B.”

CC-licensed images:
Motorcycle and sidecar by BotheredByBees / Peter Shanks.
Pomodoro juice by Tanzen 80 / Antonio Fucito.