Performance Engineering: Making Human Productivity a Science Behavior you take with you, Accomplishments you leave behind. | ganization, or just among the dustries and organizations that | People in your group, ifyou had | had gradually evolved over the by Thomas F. Gilbert & Marilyn B. | everything going for you?” centuries to bring us to unheard Gilbert of heights of productivity; and, What do you think they then, just 20 years ago, they would say? Alas, they stand right | began a sudden, steady decline. Eesti produciviy tapers | terewith he economists About | aan ers though we ns i : " many managers, though, we ently in decline; and now one 10 percent sounded good to Should be able to do better with high-ranked practitioner of the Dismal Science announced that it was too late. He proclaimed that even if we could reach our peak some strong leadership and wild 50 percent, but far more of | Some Son them like the odds on 5 percent. But that may be a wrong view So, what can we performance potential for improving produc- Ps of what is happening. At least, tivity © percent or 10 Barcent), it | engineers tell you about produc- | try our view for a moment, which would net be enough. And he ap- -its potential, and itsfu- | is quite different, go back with us plied his doomsday palette ture? What do we say? We are some 200,000 years. What were ‘beyond America to all mankind. not even close. We say 50 percent | we doing? Sitiing around spend- Furthermore, according to.a sur- | isthe ground floor; then we sail | ing as much time as we could in vey afterwards, 80 percent of the | on. Even a 500-fold improvement | watching each other behave; and, economists tend to agree, and doesn’t make us blink; we always | because we had to, going out and ‘only 5 percent saw a bright wonder if that isn’t a bit conserva- | bringing back the berries. There horizon. tive. And we are not talking was nothing much else t0 a about improvements in produc- | complish. Okay, some brought By these accounts the human | tivity that are posible through ex- Se een race peaked in 1968 or so, just as | tremely difficult measures; we are_| Sure Some made pots and tools ive authors had the last of our talking about improvements that pee econ eae lange brood. How depressing to | can be gained with relative ease | Accomplishments were few and be fold that our beloved symbols | through the application of alittle | jy yfas as complex as it istoday, of productivity have no future, | sence despite ‘our romances about “the managers themselves? “What Who is right? According to eae ee ‘would be the potential for im- the economists and managers, we Now come ahead 100,000 proving productivity in your or- | now have incredibly complex in- | years, What were we accomplish PERFORMANCE & INSTRUCTION / JANUARY 19893ing? Going out and bringing back the berries—very litle else—and hurrying home to indulge our greatest love, which is observing other people behave. Once more, go back with usa mere 1,000 years. What were most of us accomplishing? The same. How about 200 years ago? You got it: no change. ‘These enormously complex, modem organizations and the in- tticate industrial society are only about 80 years old. Why, our very model of the productive na- tion—Japan—was laid flat only a little more than 40 years ago; and it didn’t have much before that except for a few factories that turned out ships, planes, and rail- roads considered primitive even by that day’s standards. Not long ago, when we visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, we asked to see the original metal-stamping machines. We were told we couldn't see them, though, be- cause they were still in use. Suddenly our daily ac- complishments have grown from a handful, like bringing back ber- ries, to tens of thousands. After eons of learning to watch the most complex behavior while managing the simplest ac- complishments (for example, ‘counting the berries), we are faced with a completely new world: We no longer send people off to find the berries in the forests, where we can’t see them behave, and then measure their simple accomplishments when they return, In this century, we had to master a totally new set of skills: How to manage countless ac- complishments, and few so simple as counting berries, while being greatly distracted by all that attention-demanding be- havior of people who no longer 0 off into the woods to work. Within a century, all of our striv- ing for technology came together, and, overnight, as human history ‘goes, we have immensely com- plex organizations and little science to manage them by: the in- vasion of the behavior-snatchers. For the first 50 years, these be- havior-snatchers brought uncan- ay increases in productivity. en the slowdown and the steady decline as they met the useful limits of our primitive ‘methods of management. We began to invent (or reinvent) seudosciences to account for be- iavior, such as psychoanalysis and many other psychologies. Surely our medicine men of 200,000 years ago talked the same way. If their inventions didn’t sur- vive, it was simply because writ- ing hadn’t yet been invented, Unfortunately, those be- havioral pseudosciences haven't helped us very much, Because, even if they were true sciences, they are not the kind we needed in order to manage people in the new organizations. Almost everyone has all the intelligence, motives, and emotional character to succeed at work. And even if they don’t, no one knows how to do much about supplying them. Our sills at observing and inter- acting with human behavior, al- though enormously complex and well developed, are not sciences that we know how to apply. Al- though our fine antennae can Figure 1. Science Is Simple detect the slightest disgruntle- trent inothege we doe t nou what to do about it, We have earned little about how to direct- ly change people's motives, emo- tions, and intelligence that we can attribute to anything else but high art. Yet high art fails us when we are faced with the persistently declining productivity of our spar- King new organizations. What we need is a science. All that mag- nificent potential we promised earlier is possible only through a “But hold it,” you say. “Science is complicated and takes ages to master and promote. Do we even have time?” Figure 1 should shatter any as- sumptions about the difficulties, of science. Science is not difficult and complex. It is nature that is difficult and complex. Science plifies. If science weren't the implest way to look at the world, we could never under- stand beyond its surface. Isaac Newton's powerful achievement was not to make science complex, but to find hidden simplicities in the enormous complexities of na- ture. “Hey,” he said, in words ill- designed for common BUT, MaNS-vmy MaKe {ne TELESCOPE SO COMPLEX WHEN TE Stans Ane 80 Shnuer 4 PERFORMANCE & INSTRUCTION / JANUARY 1999understanding (we'll paraphrase him), “all that immensely com- plex physical world has only three basic dimensions and is. guided by only three basic rules.” Einstein was equally simplify- ing: “You thought Newton had it all wrong, but no. Add a twist here and there, and we can make his science universal.” ‘These people, and other simplifiers like them, guided us to the invention of television sets. and computers, and to the development of those terribly complex organizations. So let us tell you about our lit- tle simplifying science of human performance. It, oo, has only three basic parts. Remember, science is simple. But also remem- ber the productivity improve- ments we promised—2-, 10-, 100-, or 500-fold. And a lot more. We've seen it, we've done it, and you can do it too. ‘The First Element of a Performance Science: The Subject Matter First, science must have a sub- ject matter—the thing that is the Figure 2. Defining Human Performance focus of our interest (not neces- sarily of our passion). To move the productivity of our great com- plex organizations upwards, our subject matter must be human ac- complishment—not human be- havior! When we focus on human behavior, we are looking 180 degrees out of kilter. So let's clarify this by defining, human performance. It is not dif ficult, but deceptively simple. As Figure 2 shows, itis a transaction between human behavior and human accomplishment—ac- complishment being the valuable output that we leave behind. But, as with all transactions, itis pos- sible to focus on one aspect or another. For example, we can focus on the buyer and look to the seller as a controllable condi- tion that might determine the ac- tions of the buyer. Of course, we could make the behavior our focal concern— except that between the hours of Sand 5 we have little reason to do that. Our first and focal con- cern is whether the customer buys, not whether the seller is mad or motivated. But if our sales are less than exemplary, then we must look at behavior to determine what about itis out of control BEHAVIOR PERFORMANCE ACCOMPLISHMENT Over these thousands of years, we have leaned to focus on human behavior. As you will see, behavior enters our science ina vital way, but it is not our subject, matter. Furthermore, when we focus on behavior, we are looking 180 degrees in the opposite direc- tion from where we should be looking—at accomplishment. “Easy,” you say. “We already focus on results in our organiza- tion.” But we did not say results. We said accomplishments. And there is a big difference. Rule 1: Precision in Language Results can be behaviors. Changes in attitude can be results, By accomplishments, we don’t mean that kind of thing at all. indeed, science insists upon something here that is too rarely racticed in talk about human Eehavior in the workplace: recision in language. Science Lays,“ will help you find im- mense payoffs, but you must play by my rules. And one of my rules is that you avoid sloppy talk.” By accomplishment we mean the valuable outputs that people leave behind them when they go home after work. A pile of berries is an accomplishment, but not the attitudes the berry pickers take home with them. We have found that few people know how to describe the accomplishments of jobs with any precision. Our eyes seem to be focused—almost riveted—on behavior. Under- standably. We have over 200,000 ‘years of practice and probably a powerful genetic inclination, as well Parenthetically, we can give an excellent example of how human beings are more skillful at Watching other humans behave than they are at doing anything else. tis said that the great Sarah Bernhardt could send spectators, to tears—even those who were sit- ting at the rear of a large theater— and with just the slightest PERFORMANCE & INSTRUCTION / JANUARY 19895