Performance Management: Changing Behavior That Drives Organizational Effectiveness (part 1)

Introduction to Performance Management
by
Charles Lamson

In Wealth and Poverty, author George Gilder (1981) states:

...productivity differences between workers doing the same job in a particular plant are likely to vary as much as four to one and differences as high as 50 percent can arise between plants commanding identical equipment and the same size labor force that is paid identically. Matters of management, motivation, and spirit - and their effects on willingness to innovate and seek new knowledge - dwarf all measurable inputs in accounting for productive efficiency, both for individuals and groups and for management and labor (p. 40).

The organization that can isolate effective people management practices, processes, and procedures and implement them efficiently will have a significant competitive advantage over those that cannot. Performance Management (PM)  gives you a precise system for managing performance at work, and is based on scientific knowledge of human behavior.

Performance Management: Science and Values

As you read this analysis, you will see many instances of the science of behavior analysis applied with precision and effectiveness. Once you master the technology, you will have choices about how you achieve your performance objectives. What you work to achieve, how you set up conditions for success, what you reinforce, and what you punish - all such actions contain ethical elements.

None of us are free from the moral and legal implications of what we do. The business of managing people is very serious indeed but it can and should be fun more often than not. When done well, nothing managers do is of greater importance than helping employees become and remain successful while having a good time doing it.

What is Performance Management?

Performance Management is a technology for creating a workplace that brings out the best in people while generating the highest value for the organization. The techniques and practices of PM are derived from the field called behavior analysis, the term describing the scientific study of behavior analysis that seeks to extend the findings of laboratory research to everyday problems.

The field of Applied Behavior Analysis was clearly defined by Baer, Wolf, and Risley (1968). Its subject matter is human behavior: why we act as we do, how we acquire habits, and how we lose them; in other words, why we do the things we do and how we can change them, if change is needed. Performance Management, as defined in this book which is the subject of this analysis (Performance Management by Aubrey C. Daniels and James E. Daniels), is a branch of Applied Behavior Analysis that focuses on the workplace.

To understand behavior, behavior analysts use the same scientific methods that the physical sciences employ: precise definition of the behavior under study, experimentation, and consistent replication of the experimental findings. Basic research in this area has been conducted for over a century (e.g., Thorndike, 1898; Watson, 1913; Skinner, 1936). However, applied research has been conducted only since the 1950s. Business, industrial, and government applications began in the late 1960s.

Compared with most of the established sciences, behavior analysis is very young, but much has been learned in a short period of time. Many of the principles of learning are relatively well understood at this point. Although much remains to be learned, current knowledge has been used to solve thousands of business problems in the last four decades. Many of these problems plagued organizations for a long time and in some cases were thought to be unsolvable. For example, in a television tube manufacturing plant two quality problems that had troubled the plant for over a year were solved in one day! Also, many businesses such as restaurants, hotels, call centers, and other minimum wage occupations accept high turnover rates as a necessary cost of doing business. Yet, the use of PM methods has cut turnover in just 90 days, or so the writers of this book contend.

To be continued...

*SOURCE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, 4TH ED., 2004, AUBREY C. DANIELS, JAMES E. DANIELS, PGS. 4-7*

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