Several years ago when I was working with a group of customer service reps, leads, and trainers to improve performance in their call center, I was talking about what happens in realtime customer service and sales environments when people lack fluent knowledge or can't find information they need (e.g., on a badly designed intranet or sales support web site). They often tend to "wing it" in one way or the other, speaking to customers in words that seem credible and that they hope are accurate. At that point one lead CSR chimed in, "Oh...you're talkin' about going to MSU!" At first I had no idea what she meant, guessing that she was referring to a major university. Then she said, simply, "Makin' stuff up." I have been using this as a sort of joke, but also a truism, ever since.
The caution to avoid MSU is as relevant in the practice of performance improvement as it is in customer service, particularly in the stage where one is attempting to clearly define work outputs and behavior, unpacking the
performance chain.
I have noticed over the years that many training professionals, especially very creative ones, have the luxury of MSU, and in fact are often rewarded for it. (I've been there myself.) When one is trying to teach people a set of concepts, or new types of skills, or to explain things to them, one of the most creative things one can do is to design an acronym, present a list of 4 categories ("the four P's of marketing") or create some other verbal construct that communicates what you are trying to teach, helps people remember, assigns clever names to things, etc. MSU tends to work in training, as long as the information hung onto those verbal constructs is accurate. And it is recognized and reinforced because it makes things fun, novel, memorable, and so on. But it is only possible when one is putting together concepts to teach or communicate, not when one is actually attempting to provide lists and empirical descriptions of specific things in the world such as work outputs or instances of behavior.
The origins of Human Performance Technology (HPT) and of The Six Boxes® Approach are in inductive behavior science. Unlike many forms of social science, the science of B.F. Skinner and of those whom he influenced (including such HPT luminaries as Tom Gilbert, Dale Brethower, and Geary Rummler) is inductive rather than hypothetical-deductive in how it approaches the analysis of performance. Practitioners of this approach observe, record, and look for patterns rather than creating hypothetical constructs and then seeking verification (which is what previous learning theorists such as Clark Hull had done). The power of Skinner's science and of Gilbert's HPT is that they are based on observation, clear description of what is observed, and the repeated search for replication or multiple cases to establish what is technically called an "empirical generalization" – a statement that objectively describes what happens in general.
In the context of Human Performance Technology and Six Boxes practice that means we need to resist the tendency to create clever frameworks, concepts, and categories a priori (before we observe), but instead really look at behavior and its outputs, catalog them, see how they actually cluster together, and describe them accordingly. This is often sloppier and more difficult than armchair concept creation because the actual work outputs and behavior might not be immediately obvious, and one might have to observe and interview repeatedly, dig more deeply, and gather more information to determine what is actually the case.
Once we have the list of major outputs, sub-outputs, and behavior that comprise what actually happens, however, we have a much more solid foundation for improving performance. The programs or interventions that we produce from such an analysis tend to be more economical, more focused, and more cost-effective. That's why Joe Harless, the HPT pioneer who was also Tom Gilbert's protege, frequently repeated the language of his famous book title, "An ounce of analysis is worth a pound of objectives."
When you conduct front-end performance analysis, the first stages of applying the Six Boxes Approach in a systematic way, I would encourage you to actually GO, OBSERVE, AND INTERVIEW real performers to see what is actually the case, and to identify actual performance rather than creating categories or frameworks over a meeting table or in discussions with Subject Matter Experts.
This is what I mean, in the context of Six Boxes practice, when I repeat the cautionary note, "Beware of MSU."
Carl Binder, Senior Partner
Binder Riha Associates
