Hello and welcome to my home on the web. The purpose of this web site is to help you accomplish your business goals by sharing knowledge, information and resources to assist you in engineering cost-effective peak human performance.

Faced with crippling skill shortages, employers are spending skyrocketing amounts of money training workers. The problem?

Billions of dollars are spent on wasteful training courses, experts say. But new studies show most on-the-job learning happens outside a classroom.

About $5.6 billion to $16.8 billion is wasted annually on ineffective training programs that focus on so-called soft skills, based on estimates from a Rutgers University study.

Training problems:

Employees aren't motivated.
Workers who see training as a career boost will learn and feel loyal to a company, experts say. "You have to want to do it because it's going to take effort and it's going to take time." says Daniel Goleman, author of Working with Emotional Intelligence.

Programs are poorly designed.
Companies may unwitting support unimaginative or dull programs that employees find deter learning.

Trainers lack expertise.
Those providing training may not know their audience, or they lack teaching skills. Hoping to pique interest, some firms are turning to eclectic training approaches. Spring Paranet in Houston requires technical analysts to take two weeks of training a year: There is also a week-long retreat for some new hires. Bankers Trust has married training with 3-D videogames. In one game, employees try to land clients by reacting to simulated problems. Others turn to wilderness adventures, computer-based learning or mountain retreats.

But experts say businesses should check for results to separate effective programs from costly gimmicks. "American industry is spending billions and billions on training programs and doing no evaluation of their effectiveness," says Cary Cherniss, a professor at Rutgers. "You have to measure it." 

Solution: Human Performance Improvement (HPI)

Human Performance Improvement (HPI) is a strategy and a set of procedures for realizing opportunities related to the performance of people that make up the workforce. HPI can be applied to individuals, small groups, and large organizations. 

HPI is a systematic combination of four fundamental components: performance analysis, cause analysis, intervention selection and intervention implementation.

• Do you need to help your average performers become exemplary performers?
• Do you have the potential for improved performance in your organization?
• Would improved employee performance help you better accomplish your business goals?

I can help you use Human Performance Improvement to:

1. Identify the mission and most valuable business accomplishments.

2. Identify star performers (exemplary individuals who produce the most value).

3. Determine what those star performers are doing to produce exemplary performance.

4. Prescribe changes that enable average performers to excel as well as the exemplary performers.

A well-functioning human performance improvement process allows people to do work of which they can be proud. Outputs of a human performance improvement process includes a smooth operating system, delighted customers, motivated employees, improved business results, improved productivity, improved operating performance, improved quality, increased revenue, reduced operating costs, trust, leadership capability, and business knowledge.

Thank you for stopping by my web site. The resources found in this site will enable you to begin to employ the proven science of human behavior to peak your organization's performance.

Doug Mead
Marshall, Michigan
Phone: 269.781.9603
Fax: 269.781.3827
doug@dougmead.com
Blog: How to Achieve Peak Human Performance