“What Would Tom Gilbert Do” is the sixth in a series of posts I am doing to share about key organizational development frameworks. Sure, many are Old School ideas but VERY solid and fully developed frameworks that are generally ignored. Tom Gilbert was a major influencer on people and performance and was a colleague of mine on a few projects back in the 1980s.

Note: I’m frustrated. And I have felt that way for a LONG time. In my early years, I had hope we could improve organizations through training and consulting but Gallup, Arbinger, Bersin and much other research clearly shows NOTHING has really improved.

I am waiting for AI to start culling the bad managers from the workplace after having read a LOT of different books about organizations and leadership and management over the past 50 years. We have the metrics, we just need some effective actions.

What Would Tom Gilbert Do to Improve Organizational Performance? 

Who was Thomas F. Gilbert (1927–1995)?

He was a psychologist who is often known as the founder of the field of Human Performance Technology (HPT) and I long ago had the chance to sit with him reviewing his manuscript in his office on a snowy winter day in North Jersey. Tom coined and used the term Performance Engineering and felt that performance deserved analytical study to focus on impacting the variables underlying motivation and behavior. His thinking was interesting and his ideas made sense from a Skinnerian (think Walden 2) kind of workplace perspective.

Tom wrote an impactful 1978 book called “Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance“ that shared his ideas that formal learning programs often only brought about a change in knowledge, not a change in behavior, and that environments could be engineered for improvement. Like Bob Mager, he believed that performance could be improved and that training was not necessarily the solution.

His notion of “environments” has somewhat mutated to become “organizational cultures” in my way of thinking. And individuals and teams DO interact with those environments, for sure.

Tom believed that performance is a function of an interaction between a person’s behavior and his or her environment (P = B × E) to produce the Performance Engineering Model — used to identify opportunities to systematically develop the managerially controllable systems and other factors in the work environments which support employee performance. (My subsequent work with Ed Feeney used many of these same approaches.)

His framework was Skinnerian: Antecedents lead to Behaviors which, in turn, lead to Consequences. Consequences either increase (reinforcement) or decrease (punishment) the probability of future repetition of this behavior.

Simply, he believed that it was absence of performance support at work — not someone’s lack of knowledge or skill — that was the greatest barrier to exemplary performance. Therefore, he believed it was most necessary to focus on variables in the work environment before addressing variables at the individual level.

My thinking is that he would be a strong proponent of using AI to influence performance and improve feedback necessary to generate high levels of individual performance. I do not recall him focusing much on team performance but those same ideas apply and his pragmatic view would certainly be influenced by team effectiveness in solving organizational issues.

If Tom Gilbert were running a corporation today, his approach would be focusing on optimizing individual performance improvement through a systematic analysis of both behavior and environment.

The HPT model classifies factors affecting performance into six categories, divided into environmental supports and individual behavior. He would likely use this model to diagnose performance issues and design interventions. His six factors are:

• Environmental Supports:
  • Information: Ensure that team members have access to the necessary information to perform their tasks effectively.
  • Resources: Provide the tools, time and resources required to accomplish their work.
  • Incentives: Align incentives with team goals to motivate collaboration and high performance. 
• Individual Behavior related to teams:
  • Knowledge: Offer training and development opportunities to enhance team members’ skills. This is sometimes a “skill” since people are generally more focused on competition than collaboration.
  • Capacity: Ensure that team members have the physical and mental capacity to perform their tasks.
  • Motives: Foster a work environment that aligns individual motivations with team and organizational goals.

His concept of “worthy performance” revolves around achieving valuable results without incurring excessive costs. He articulated this through his First Leisurely Theorem:

“Worth = Value/Cost > 1.00. Human competence is a function of worth performance (W), which is a function of the ratio of valuable accomplishments to costly behavior” .

Gilbert believed that any kind of performance could be measured and thus improved. He introduced, for example, the Potential for Performance Improvement (PIP) metric, which compares exemplary performance to typical performance:

“PIP = Wex / Wt. The accomplishment must be identifiable in concrete measurable terms” .

A key factor for me still was his Exemplary Performer thinking, that certain individuals were generating higher than average performance that others could also attain if they did things differently. Performance of these individuals could serve as benchmarks for improving overall performance in an organization. They did Best Practices in many cases and behaved as others could choose to behave. This concept was later reinforced by Tom Peters in his many works.

Gilbert would undoubtably employ an overall, systematic approach to performance improvement, which most probably would include his using AI tools to identify areas for improvement and direct efforts efficiently across the organization to give people the support and feedback needed to sustain results.

Here are some relevant quotes: 

• “Competent people are those who can create valuable results without using excessively costly behavior.”
• “Performance improvement sees people for what they can do, and not for their limitations.”
• “The belief that the more complex forms of performance are not subject to measurement and quantification arises simply from ignorance about how to do it” 
• “Exemplary performance is identified as the value of the historically best instances of performance available.”
• “Improved information has more potential than anything else I can think of for creating more competence in the day-to-day work of people” .

To leverage the insights from exemplary performers, Gilbert would likely recommend the following actions:

1. Benchmarking: Use exemplary performers as benchmarks to set performance standards and goals for the rest of the team.
2. Training and Development: Identify the skills and behaviors that make exemplary performers successful and incorporate these into training programs for other employees.
3. Feedback Systems: Establish robust feedback mechanisms to help typical performers understand how they can improve by emulating exemplary performers.
4. Resource Allocation: Ensure that all team members have access to the same information, tools, and resources that exemplary performers use.

Key Actions Gilbert Might Take

1. Implementing: Gilbert would use his analytical framework to identify and address performance gaps by ensuring that people have the necessary information, resources, and incentives, and by enhancing their knowledge, capacity, and motives.
2. Focusing on Value and Cost: He would emphasize the importance of achieving high-value outcomes with minimal costs, ensuring that the organization’s efforts are both effective and efficient. 
3. Measuring Performance: Gilbert would establish clear, measurable performance metrics to track progress and identify areas for improvement. There are many parallels to the Managing By Objectives approach of Peter Drucker. 
4. Continuous Improvement: He would foster a culture of continuous improvement, using data-driven insights to refine processes and enhance performance. He might even appreciate my coining of the phrase, “continuous continuous improvement!”

In summary, if Tom Gilbert were running a corporation today, he would apply his principles of performance engineering to create a high-performing organization that values efficiency, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement.

Creating a Collaborative High-Performance Environment

My guess is that he would also be a big proponent of improving team performance, although there is not much said about that in his works. Gilbert would likely advocate for a collaborative leadership approach, which involves:

• Open Communication: Facilitate excellent internal communication to ensure that team members can share information and ideas freely.
• Feedback Mechanisms: He would implement EFFECTIVE feedback loops to help team members self-evaluate their performance and define areas for improvement.
• Alignment of Metrics: Ensure that performance metrics are aligned across departments to avoid conflicts and promote collaboration

Tom would definitely be viewed as “Old School” because of his analytical focus on individual performance. Yet one would also see him focus the organization on the key issues and opportunities.

Here is a solid article on “old school” leadership about some practical insights into how to align culture with strategy and energize employees today. https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Leaders-should-revisit-the-works-of-three-corporate-culture-pioneers

And here are some of my related blog posts, with more to come: 

#1 – What would Tom Peters Do – https://performancemanagementcompany.com/2024/07/02/what-would-tom-peters-do/

#2 – What would Peter Drucker Do – https://performancemanagementcompany.com/2024/07/08/what-would-peter-drucker-do/

#3 – What would Frederick Taylor Do – https://performancemanagementcompany.com/2024/07/13/what-would-frederick-taylor-do/

#4 – What would Bob Mager Do – https://performancemanagementcompany.com/2024/07/17/what-would-bob-mager-do-to-improve-organizational-performance/

#5 – What would W. Edwards Deming Do? – https://performancemanagementcompany.com/2024/07/23/what-would-deming-do/

The Truth is Out There! (so go read about it!)