What are the big ideas in HPT?

With its focus on individual and organizational performance improvement, HPT relies on tested systemic models for identifying performance gaps and recommending holistic solutions. The following represent key components of HPT:

• Business results: working to improve productivity, efficiency, profitability, performance and competence
   

• Analysis: conducting performance (organizational, environmental and gap) analyses and cause analysis prior to intervention selection
   

• Change management: helping to analyze, design, develop and evaluate effective interventions to support organizational change
   

• Systemic approach: considering the entire organizational system—human and social systems, physical and technical systems, management systems and employee incentive systems--when conducting performance audits
   

• Cost effectiveness: seeking the most cost effective interventions to generate positive results
   

• Problem solving: relying on established, systematic methods for solving organizational problems
   

• Performance objectives: identifying valid performance objectives
   

• Human and organizational behavior: conducting analysis to enhance efficiency

Where did HPT come from?
 

HPT originated as a branch of instructional technology, when instructional designers realized that even the best designed and deployed training solutions sometimes failed to produce desired business outcomes. Thomas Gilbert, a graduate student of noted behaviorist B. F. Skinner, is considered to be the father of HPT. In the 1960s he began applying Skinner’s behaviorist learning principles to the workplace and eventually incorporated non-instructional components to create his Behavioral Engineering Model in the mid-1970s. Concurrently, one of Gilbert’s students, Joe Harless, developed a performance improvement process incorporating a new front-end analysis approach.

These models led the training industry to recognize that while many human performance problems can be addressed via training interventions, others require non-instructional interventions—which lies at the core of HPT.

Who are the thought leaders behind HPT?

The field of HPT is populated by many gurus. Below are a select few:

• B.F. Skinner: psychologist known as the father of behaviorist learning theory, who tried to explain how people operate in their environments
   

• Thomas Gilbert: HPT researcher who is considered the father of HPT
   

• Joe Harless: HPT researcher who developed front-end analysis methodology and an early performance improvement process
   

• Robert Mager: creator of the performance analysis flowchart
   

• Geary Rummler: creator of nine performance variables
   

• David Wile: creator of the synthesized HPT model