The Six Boxes Blog

Revised Six Boxes Web Site and ISPI Conference Highlights

We've just returned from a week at The International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) where we were busy, and where The Six Boxes Approach continued to attract a lot of enthusiastic interest.

Before giving you a run-down on the highlights of that conference, we want to direct you to our revised web site, SixBoxes.com.  This is an interim site, meant to update information about The Six Boxes Approach and our new suite of Six Boxes Programs, prior to a major re-launch of the site scheduled in a few months.  We hope you'll take a few minutes to check it out.

Kicking off ISPI with a pre-conference workshop, we facilitated a Basic Six Boxes Program for a group of seasoned performance improvement professionals, including two planning to become Certified Six Boxes Coaches.  The workshop was lively and engaging and, as usual, we probably learned at least as much as the workshop participants.  It's always great to see how The Six Boxes Approach stimulates new thinking and helps people "connect the dots" about performance and how to improve it.

We also presented four educational sessions at the conference, one an "Encore" session, voted as one of the best from last year, describing how The Six Boxes Approach synthesizes an enormous amount of what is known from both research and practice related to managing and improving performance.  

We were pleased to partner in presentations with three of our colleagues.  

Brian Turner from Microsoft presented with Carl about how we have been working with Microsoft's Engineering Excellence group to transform it from a learning and development department to a performance consulting organization, using The Six Boxes Approach as a foundation.  

Art Stadlin of Ceridian Benefit Services described a beautiful implementation of Six Boxes Skip-level Meetings in his IT organization, using our model as a framework for the meetings, to summarize findings, and to plan for improvement. 

Carl also presented a session with our old friend and mentor, Dr. Don Tosti, whose work on clarifying and strengthening organizational culture has been a major influence on us.  Carl and Don facilitated a discussion with an overflowing audience contrasting a proactive "design engineering" approach to performance improvement with the more reactive problem-solving approach that seems to characterize so much work in organizations these days.  Our view, seemingly shared by most in the audience, is that taking a design optimization approach offers much greater power and potential for improvement than focusing exclusively on specific problems, root cause analysis, and specific solutions. We think the latter approach misses many opportunities for truly breakthrough results.

Carl conducted a series of roundtable sessions showing how we use The Performance Chain to identify measures for evaluating the impact of performance improvement efforts.  This combined one element of The Six Boxes Approach with some of our previous work on performance measurement.

After the conference Carl and Timm Esque (ISPI Director) met with a group of delegates from Korea, convened by our associate, Kinam Sung, for an open-ended discussion about the entire conference.  Our Korean colleagues, who have shown a keen interest in The Six Boxes Approach since we first introduced it at LG Academy 2005, once again demonstrated their eagerness to learn and enthusiasm for new ideas. 

One of the most significant parts of the conference for us was an inspiring keynote presentation on leadership and values delivered by Frances Hesselbein, a remarkable woman who is Chair of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. For anyone interested in leadership for the 21st century, we highly recommend her books. And at a personal level, when she signed our copy of her most recent book, the humanity and authenticity that she radiated person-to-person were truly awesome.

Last, but perhaps not least important, we were honored and grateful that Carl received ISPI's highest recognition, the Honorary Lifetime Membership Award, for his contributions to ISPI and to the field of performance improvement.

We're looking forward to the next few months, during which we expect to certify several new Six Boxes Coaches, begin implementing Six Boxes programs for Executive Leaders, and prepare our new web site with additional resources and web 2.0 features to support our growing community of practice.

As always, we welcome your comments, questions, and new ideas.

All the Best,

The Six Boxes Team

We have Ignition!

Yesterday (March 23, 2009) we convened our Seattle area Six Boxes® Development ('lab") group for a face-to-face meeting, something that has been happening about once per quarter since we began the group last Spring.  In between such face-to-face gatherings, we meet each week via web conference to learn, share work, and give each other feedback.  This is how we have been learning from our successes and shortcomings, slowly refining our tools, methods and language so that we can reliably produce competent Certified Six Boxes Coaches and Affiliates.

Our group brings together ten colleagues representing a wide range of backgrounds, interests and areas of expertise -- including an experienced training manager working to develop performance consultants in one of our largest corporate clients; several young professionals with technical backgrounds in organizational behavior management now working as either employees or consultants in human services agencies; a senior manager of finance with an MBA from prestigious American university who began her career in her native Nigeria and who is developing a team leadership program on the side; and three former executives now providing consulting services in cross-cultural leadership development, marketing, and performance improvement, respectively.

What was remarkable, and very gratifying about yesterday's meeting, is that among this very diverse group of professionals who now share the language and concepts of the Performance Chain and The Six Boxes Model, there emerged a true community of practice, a shared vocabulary and increasingly clear understanding about human performance and what makes it tick.  It was an explosion, or at least an ignition of "performance thinking" in a group that is in many ways representative of the types of people in organizations who we believe can benefit from The Six Boxes Approach. 

It was absolutely fantastic to see them, all with different technical and professional backgrounds, speaking as peers in plain English about The Six Boxes Approach, giving each other feedback and suggestions, presenting each other with performance descriptions and analyses, talking about how they use the tools, and so on.

We have envisioned for at least 3 years the possibility of a global community of practice sharing the simple but powerful language and tools of The Six Boxes Approach, each involved in their own work and bringing the particular details of that to the table, contributing to and participating in a growing collective understanding about performance and how to improve it. I can honestly say that it is no longer just a vision!

While this is certainly just a start, our work together has paid off. We have learned a lot about what it takes to get people to this point, and we are certain we can do it with increasing speed and ease for future groups.

We have ignition, and now we can build on that bright spark!

Thanks to all who have been involved.  I think this is going to be BIG!

Carl Binder, Senior Partner

Binder Riha Associates

The Six Boxes at the ISPI Conference April 18-23

For those interested in learning more about The Six Boxes® Approach we will be offering our one-day Basic Six Boxes Workshop at a reduced fee in Orlando, FL, on April 18 at the annual conference of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) to be held at the Dolphin Hotel at Disneyworld. This is one of the few times we do the workshop publicly so it’s a great opportunity for individuals to get an introduction to the Six Boxes.

There will also be others talking about the Six Boxes at the conference. Here's a list of all the events where we or others are presenting on the topic:

Removing Performance Obstacles: Connecting Leaders with Staff Using The Six Boxes® 

Art Stadlin, Ceridian Benefits Services, Carl Binder, CPT, PhD, Binder Riha Associates, and Julie A. Capsambelis, CPT, Ceridian - Military OneSource 

Using the Six Boxes® Model to Synthesize Research and Practice – An Encore Presentation (one of last year's best)

Carl Binder, CPT, Ph.D, Binder Riha Associates 

Making the Six Boxes® Your Ultimate Analysis Tool -- Microsoft Case Study 

Brian Turner and Carl Binder, CPT, PhD, Binder Riha Associates  

Creating Opportunities or Repairing Broken Systems: Proactive Design vs. Reactive Problem-solving? 

Carl Binder, CPT, PhD, Binder Riha Associates and Don Tosti, Vanguard Consulting Inc.  

Cracker Barrel: Measurement Counts! Using the Performance Chain to Plan Evaluation

Carl Binder, CPT, PhD 

In addition, Carl will be receiving the Honorary Lifetime Member award for his many years of contribution to ISPI and the field of performance technology.

You can learn more about ISPI and the conference at http://www.ispi.org/content.aspx?id=308&linkidentifier=id&itemid=308.  A brief description of the workshop is below.

 

 

The Six Boxes® Approach: A Fast On-Ramp to Human Performance Technology
Carl Binder, CPT, PhD, Senior Partner, Binder Riha Associates  

Workshop Code: WSD 



The simplicity and plain language of The Six Boxes® Approach can drive rapid communication and implementation of human performance technology across all organizational levels, in diverse cultures, to address performance challenges great and small. This workshop teaches the language and concepts of Six Boxes "performance thinking" for organizational alignment, needs analysis, best practices initiatives, implementation planning, leadership, and other performance improvement efforts. It introduces practical tools and templates plus language that participants can start to apply immediately. 

Participants will be able to: 

·      Communicate in clear, plain language with everyone about causes of deficient and exemplary performance. 

·      Identify metrics for measuring the impact of programs and interventions.

·      Gain consensus about performance objectives and how to achieve them.

·      Obtain and analyze information for needs analyses, best practices initiatives, performance system design, implementation planning, process improvement, and training support.

·      Spread fundamental HPT and performance thinking across diverse organizations and cultures.

 The price for the workshop is $395 for conference attendees or ISPI members, and $445 otherwise, discounted from our usual $495 price.

The Value of Six Boxes Coaching

We've been developing and refining our overall program architecture for several years now, and our web site has not really kept up with that development. The good news is that we are finally embarking on a systematic re-design of the web site and re-configuration of our products and services intended to teach and support application of The Six Boxes Approach.  Look for a re-launch of the site, and of our Six Boxes products and services during the first quarter of 2009.

As a preview, we want to emphasize the increased attention we are putting on Six Boxes coaching services and programs.  Because our decades of using this approach have mostly involved working with teams -- either internal teams in client organizations or teams of consultants -- to apply the Six Boxes, we have almost always provided frequent and continuous coaching for beginners.  That coaching typically combined instruction, providing models, getting people started on their own analyses, providing feedback to correct beginners' mistakes, and generally helping them apply The Six Boxes Approach to their own particular problems and situations.  With initial coaching of this sort, ramp-up to confident application is much faster and less stressful.

As we have begun to teach people without being ongoing participants in their projects, less often working with teams from beginning to end of those projects, we have sometimes let the coaching component slide.  It has become clear that this is a mistake, and our emerging offerings will contain a variety of coaching components recommended and provided to those interested in learning The Six Boxes Approach, including:

• Six Boxes coaching services following Six Boxes Workshops and eLearning programs

• The Six Boxes Coach Certification Program

• A growing community of Six Boxes Coaches, and

• emphasis on developing internal Six Boxes Coaches with The Six Boxes Leaders/Champions Program.

Underlying all of this are data showing that without follow-up coaching, learning does not usually turn into application.  Here are some data, summarized from a research article on the impact of coaching on ability to apply what is taught:

We think these are very compelling data and will continue to develop programs and tools intended to put these results into action.

Carl Binder

A Budding Six Boxes Community of Practice

At the heart of The Six Boxes^® Approach is the idea that the simple, plain Language of the Six Boxes Model and the Performance Chain can become a basis for developing communities of practice who understand and work to improve their own and others' performance based on a shared, simple but powerful framework.  We imagine organizational cultures based on application of the learning and performance sciences by means of Six Boxes "performance thinking."

It's a great vision. Our newest step in that direction is our gathering of fellow Six Boxes users and prospective Certified Six Boxes Coaches in the Seattle area. We've been meeting since May, and are on the path to creating a local Six Boxes community of practice that we hope to scale to the whole world!

Here's the happy group at our first meeting, on Bainbridge Island, WA, in May, 2008.

Carl Binder.

Six Boxes® Registered Trademark

We're happy to announce that after using the common law "TM" for our Six Boxes trademark for over a decade, it has finally achieved the status as a registered trademark - Six Boxes^®.

This is a higher level of legal protection meeting a more rigorous standard: the mark has been vetted and has passed the criterion that it is distinctive and does not infringe on others.  This entitles it to registration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and protection under U.S. trademark law. Of course we expect it to be recognized internationally as well, as our programs and publications spread overseas to Asia, Latin America and Europe.

We reserve the right to use Six Boxes to refer to our products and services, and to our copyrighted language in the Six Boxes Model (http://www.sixboxes.com/sixboxesgraphic.html).  We are in the process of going through our web site references, workshop materials, and other documents to replace the TM with the ® symbol.

This also represents our serious intention to continue developing the Six Boxes business and community of certified practitioners and workshop facilitators, to develop programs and publications that will continue to drive this simple but powerful research-based approach to performance improvement beyond experts and specialists to a wider audience of users.   

Thanks to all our supporters and colleagues who have expressed interest in The Six Boxes^® Approach over the years, and who continue to recognize and help promote our particular brand of Human Performance Technology.

Carl Binder, Senior Partner

Six Boxes™ Happenings

Our email newsletter, The Six Boxes News, has been quiet for a long time now. There has been so much happening in the last few months, and so much to come soon, that we're a bit swamped. We decided to start this blog, even before the re-launch of our web site, SixBoxes.com, to keep you apprised of new developments.

The plan is to re-launch the web site, with much expanded capabilities and a new look, in a roll-out that will also include new offerings, certification opportunities, the first Six Boxes book, and more -- some time in the fall. In the mean time, I'll try to post an entry on this blog every week or so, to update you and help spread the word.

One of the most exciting recent events has been the launch of our Seattle Six Boxes Development Group. For several years we've had requests from around the world (literally), from people who want to be certified to lead Six Boxes Workshops or use the Six Boxes Approach in their coaching work with clients. It's been hard to kick-start a certification program with people so far away, so instead we're starting a little closer to home. We've assembled a diverse group of about a dozen professional colleagues in the Seattle area to help us define, develop and pilot test one or more certification programs, and to develop other products and services such as eLearning modules and specialized Six Boxes programs for specific audiences.

We continue to work and plan with our great partners-clients in Microsoft's Engineering Excellence Group, piloting a Six Boxes Specialist Program and applying the Six Boxes Approach in new and challenging situations. We have emerging opportunities in several other well-known American companies to expand the role of training, introduce "performance thinking," and conduct management development with the Six Boxes Approach.

Our work in South Korea continues, with new opportunities to connect with C-level executives of major companies and drive Six Boxes "performance thinking" deeply into their organizations, and with continued support from our good friends at LG Academy. Using the Six Boxes Approach to drive cultural values and practices more deeply into organizations is a new frontier for us, something about which we are very excited.

As envisioned in our 2005 Six Boxes white paper, we believe that the plain language of the Six Boxes Model and the Performance Chain can become a foundation for "performance thinking" in organizations. Using the Six Boxes to strengthen specific values and practices that support an organization's strategic objectives is yet another level of cultural impact that we hope to effect.

I'm finally getting down to several previously arranged writing commitments so that I can finish them and get on to the first of what we hope will be a series of Six Boxes books. One of the assignments is an overview of the Six Boxes Approach for a special issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, while another will a chapter linking the Six Boxes Approach to performance measurement and evaluation.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and please come back soon!