When the leader decides that training is required for his or her followers, this poster about the Bob Pike’s Performance Cube provides a lot of food for thought and direction. Thanks to The Bob Pike Group (http://bobpikegroup.com) for allowing me to share it with you.
At first glance, you’ll notice that at the bottom it says, When performance is the issue, training is not always the answer. So, you have someone who is not performing at the level you want them to perform at. Resist the temptation to go immediately to training as the answer.
Who isn’t performing? Is it everyone? Is it a certain division? Is it a department? Is it an individual? Is it a particular job function and everyone in that job function?
Defining the WHO can save lots of money. Without defining the WHO you may be giving training to more people than who actually need it.
WHY are you going to do training? Because you always do training? Is there a problem? Sometimes it’s the compliance issue and you need to do it every year.
Is it to improve the performance that you’re seeing? Or possibly, you’re getting ready to roll something out and future planning is the focus of the training.
HOW are you going to deliver the training?
If you believe that it’s a training issue — you’ll see on that side of the cube. Is it because they’re not able to? Willing to? Allowed to? Those are three different questions.
If they’re not able to then indeed training might be an issue. If they’re not willing to it’s a motivational issue. Then you’ll need to look at some of the other words on that side of the “How Cube”.
If they’re not allowed to, that also indicates that some other areas are involved in their lack of performance.
So, let’s go down that list of how words could be a system issue.
They’re not facilitated to do it. There aren’t systems in place that cause the performance to be where you want it to be.
Is it policy? Might it be their compensation?
We need never wonder why someone does something or doesn’t do something based on how they’re compensated. It might be a bad placement. They’re just not in the right place.
It might be a coaching issue — that’s quite different than training. Training is when I give information to a group of people. Coaching is when I come up alongside one person and help them apply the training that we gave the group. I help them apply it to their particular need.
It might be a recruitment issue. I’m not recruiting the right type of people for the task that I have. So where we started is where we end. When performance is the issue, training is not always the answer.
My hope is that this Performance Cube guides you as a leader to wisely apply training so all of your people can excel.
Categories: Instructiveness
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