Page 42 - Making Instruction Work

chap 4 3/4/97 4:56 PM Page 30

30 making instruction work

people can already perform as desired, but aren’t doing it for
reasons having nothing to do with skill? Clearly, a procedure is
needed for sorting through these problems and to locate solu-
tions that will work. Enter the performance analysis.
The performance analysis is the tool of choice when people
aren’t doing what they should be doing. It is a way of finding
out whether the differences between what they’re doing and
should be doing can be eliminated by instruction, or whether
some other action is called for. This procedure is especially
crucial for those who are expected to develop instruction at the
request of other people. It is needed—desperately—by all
instructors who are told:
• “We need a course.”

• “Improve their motivation.”

• “Fix their attitude.”

• “They don’t understand the fundamentals.”

• “We have a training problem.”

Unfortunately, many administrators and managers don’t yet
know how to analyze problems having to do with people per-
formance. So when they see a symptom—someone doing
something they shouldn’t, or not doing something they
should—they jump to the conclusion that the person doesn’t
know how to do it. So they ask their trainers to provide instruc-
tion. In thousands of instances, that instruction is then used to
“teach” people things they already know. A total waste. If only
a small amount of time (often a few minutes will do) had been
taken to find out why people weren’t performing to expecta-
tions, a proper—and less expensive—remedy could have been
selected. Hence the importance of the performance analysis.