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36 making instruction work

several possible causes, and now you should calculate how
much it would cost to fix each of them.

16. Select the best solution(s)—those that will impact the
problem, are within your power to apply, and cost less
than the problem itself.

17. Draft an action plan. This simply means to say specifical-
ly who will implement each solution and how you will get
them to do it.

18. Implement the solutions and check on the results.

A performance analysis usually takes less time to complete
than to describe, simply because the solutions to performance
problems are usually easy to spot once you begin asking the
right questions. For example, why don’t students ask questions
when they don’t understand? In many instances it’s because
they get punished when they do—because the instructor
insults and embarrasses them in public. Why don’t salespeople
behave in a customer-oriented way? Because nobody has told
them what that means. Why don’t workers solve problems
themselves, rather than asking the boss to do it? Because they
haven’t been given the authority to do it. And so on.
Yes, it’s often that simple to solve problems of human per-
formance. Sometimes it’s a little more difficult, but usually
only because information has to be collected before the analy-
sis questions can be answered. Here’s an example.

Example: In this example, an instructor who teaches com-
puter repair in a technical school is approached by the Dean.

Dean: We need to beef up your course on trouble-
shooting.