Extending Action Mapping for Performance Design

Through her Action Mapping process Cathy Moore has demystified, and put a friendly face on an analysis process that produces lean and effective learning programs with an emphasis on practice and application. The four step analysis process of identifying  business goals (1), desired actions/behaviours (2) and  practice activities (3) before identifying content (4) is much advocated but rarely practiced in instructional design. She also uses a helpful visual mapping method to work through this four step process.

Extending the process to performance design

I used the process (and visual mapping approach) to facilitate a learning requirements session a while back. I thought then that the process might be taken a little further and be used to identify gaps in the immediate performance environment known to impede performance and then specify solutions for improvement. Here’s what I’m getting at…

Performance Consulting tell us that newly developed skills alone, without a supporting environment rarely produces the performance impact we need. If you accept this view, you understand that skills and knowledge are only one factor among many that are needed for performance and that, in fact it’s often the performance environment and not the skills that need adjustment. Geary Rummler organized these critical performance factors within a systems framework and labeled it the Human Performance System (HPS), Thomas Gilbert categorized the factors in his seminal Performance Engineering Matrix which Carl Binder has distilled into his Six Boxes Model. The Robinsons summarized the factors in their Performance Consulting process. These authors have developed diagnostic tools based on the performance factors that can be used by teams, managers and performance consultants to identify barriers in the work environment and to design tools, processes, and systems that improve performance.

Borrowing from the above models the critical performance factors might be summarized as follows.

• Clear Expectations and goals (E)
  Do employees understand the behavior and results expected of them and their team?
• Supportive Tools, resources and business processes (T)
  Are employees supported by helpful performance aids, process guides and knowledge tools?
• Timely and meaningful Feedback on results of action (F)
  Is immediate feedback provided to employees and their team (system generated or human) on the quality and accuracy of their actions and output?
• No Interfering or competing demands (I)
  Is the role free of demands on time and task that interfere with accomplishment of individual and team goals?
• Consequences aligned to expectations and goals (C)
  Do good things happen when employees accomplish goals and meet expectations or do they happen more for undesired performance?

So how might we extend Cathy’s Action Mapping method to design an optimal performance environment in addition to a learning solution? The first two steps remain the same. 1. Identify the business goal 2. Identify what people need to do to reach the goal. However, at this point the process would shift to the key performance support questions defined above. For each behaviour (or behaviour cluster) the following performance design actions can be taken

1. Create a vehicle to continuously communicate the key goals, expectations and standards of performance
2. Design performance aids, automated tools, social learning environments, Communities of practice, and business process adjustments. The appropriate tools and supports will, of course, depend on the type of work.
3. Create a mechanism for providing continuous information (feedback) to individuals or teams on how they are performing against the desired actions.
4. Define specific actions for reducing interfering tasks and multitasking and increasing opportunities for focus on task without completing demands.
5. Revise the balance of consequences in favor of the desired performance.

Using the labels I listed above the extended Action Map might look something like this (Common support actions could support more than one behavior):

Adding Outputs and Accomplishments

The approach could be further enhanced by identifying work desired outputs before behaviours/actions (a revised step 2).  This would be especially useful when starting with the analysis of a job rather than a specific business objective. This is important for knowledge work where there may be multiple behavioural paths to the same work output. Carl Binder has labeled this approach the performance chain. The same performance thinking is at the root of both Action Mapping and the Performance Chain approach. You can learn more about performance thinking and the performance chain approach at the Six Boxes web site here.

Implementation

Performance Consulting gets legitimate criticism for sometimes for being too prescriptive and relying external experts to implement processes like those above. But there is no reason empowered self-managing team or process improvement groups cannot use the same tools to diagnose and design or influence their own performance environment. A good performance consultant can  facilitate teams through this process.  I learned a while ago from Geary Rummler that good performance consultants can provide both the training artifact requested by the organization and an improved performance environment. The extended Action Mapping method may be a great way to sneak some performance improvement into your training projects.