by ISPI Past President, Guy W. Wallace
I entered the L&D field back in 1979, right after college, and after two jobs in corporations I joined a small consulting firm of three people in 1982 and was asked to start its Training Practice Area. So, I
started that by defining and refining the process that I would use for conducting performance-based Curriculum Architecture Design (CAD) projects as an external consultant.
In 1983 my associates and I wrote two articles which were published in 1984 on our performance-based Analysis methods and our performance-based Curriculum Architecture Design methods, both using a Facilitated Group Process of Master Performers and Other Subject Matter Experts.
I eventually branded my ISD methods for CAD and for Modular Curriculum Development (MCD) as the PACT Processes for Performance Based Instruction, when we decided to sell a consultative service to help our clients adopt and adapt those ISD processes that had worked so well for us, after receiving many requests.
The CAD process had to be detailed on paper well enough that I could estimate the touch time and cycle times for the Project Plans and Proposals we would provide to prospects, and that would guide the performance of my two fellow consultants and any subcontractors I might engage.
Having been exposed to Performance Technology at NSPI (now ISPI), which would be rechristened Human Performance Technology in the mid-1990s, I wanted my Instructional Systems Design (ISD) methods to be a subset of my eventual PT/HPT methods, branded as EPPI – Enterprise Process Performance Improvement.
My framework for the enablers of Performance eventually became what this next graphic
portrays, based on what I had learned about HPT and TQM – the Total Quality Management movement.
Currently, my professional home since September 1979, ISPI, is undergoing a Renaissance. A Revival. Getting back to the roots of Performance Improvement.
I applaud these efforts. It is not the first of such efforts. The Society has changed with the times, and with the insight of experience. It has gone from a focus on Programmed Instruction, to Performance & Instruction, to Performance Improvement – by any and all means.
Back in 2000 as I was wrapping up my two-year term as a Director on the ISPI Board, I decided to run for the Presidency, in order to help clarify what HPT was and wasn’t, to help the Society better market itself and its offerings.
I was planning on jump starting that effort should I win with a 1983 article of Rummler’s that proposed that rather than define HPT via a few paragraphs, that we define HPT in terms of Technology Domains, where ‘technology’ stood for the application of science. When I asked Geary Rummler in 2001 to join me in this effort, he agreed to do so.
Judy Hale and Jim Hill agreed to let me get a running start during their terms as President, and then I won the Presidency, and after me came Don Tosti, who also agreed to support this multi-year, society-wide initiative. You can read about the effort and see all of the documentation
produced here: https://humanperformancetechnology.wordpress.com/
The effort was a success until it came to its implementation. The paid staff of the Society was less enthused than the members of the project team.
‘Technology Domains’ became the following ‘ProfessionalCommunities:’
We considered getting the 'H' out, as Danny Langdon suggested. But, after some debate, somone declared that 'All Performance is Human Endeavor.' So, the 'H' remained.
The Definition of HPT – Human Performance Technology:
Human Performance Technology – An integrated systems approach to improving human performance.
Criteria to Judge applications of HPT:
- Is focused on valuable, measured results;
- Considers the larger system context of people’s performance;
- Provides valid and reliable measures of the effectiveness of those applications
- Clearly describes applications grounded in priorresearch or empirical evidence (or are not discouraged by either one) so that they may be replicated under the conditions and by the means for which they were recommended*
*When stated this way, intuition and respected practice are permitted and encouraged (provided they meet the first three criteria) without scientific evidence provided that there is no research evidence that it may not work under the conditions or by the means where it is being recommended.
Our definition of human performance is: “those valued results produced by people working within a system.”
Assumptions:
- A technology is a set of empirical andscientific principles and their application
- Human performance technology is the technology concerned with all variables which impact human performance
- All organizational processes and practices impact the production of valued results, whether positively or negatively and whether those results go measured or unmeasured, acknowledged or not. (Everything that an organization does affects what it accomplishes, whether or not the results are acknowledged or desirable.)
- The purpose of all organizations is the same: to create value for their stakeholders; this is accomplished by aligning all processes, practices, and resources to maximize the production of that value.
- We collaborate with and value the expertise ofother disciplines; human performance technology becomes the integrator and multiplier.
Finally, I could answer my clients who asked me questions such as this one, when I tried to market ISPI and HPT to them, ‘Is Six Sigma part of HPT?
The answer is yes.
A few references:
2002 (& 1983) – The Clarifying HPT Kick-Off article including Rummler’s 1983 article on Technology Domains. https://humanperformancetechnology.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wallace_rummler_july02.pdf
1984 – Models & Matrices in the NSPI Journal. https://guywwallace.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/models-and-matrices-nspi-pij-1984.pdf
1984 – Curriculum Architecture in Training Magazine. https://guywwallace.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/cad-training-mag-1984.pdf
2004 – Clarifying HPT - Report to the ISPI Board. https://humanperformancetechnology.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ispi_presidential_task_force_042004.pdf
2006 – Modeling Mastery Performance & Systematically Deriving the Enablers for Performance Improvement. https://guywwallace.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/chapter-11-wallace-handbook-of-hpt_third-edition-2006.pdf
Thank you to Guy W. Wallace for sharing his knowledge and experience with us. To learn more about Guy, visit his website using the button below.