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White papers on performance consulting

Sixteen papers, a destination and a field guide, by Jos Arets with Vivian Heijnen. Each one reads here as a page and downloads as an A4 PDF.

Free, no registration

  1. No. 01 · 12 minThe performance improvement processTwo doors a performance problem arrives through, four ways a solution fails when nobody establishes the cause, one method for both, and the sixteen papers that go deeper.
  2. No. 02 · 22 minHuman performance technologyWhere the discipline came from, what it commits a practitioner to, and why finding the cause of a performance problem is worth more to an organization than treating what it can see.
  3. No. 03 · 16 minEnvironment before capabilityWhat the largest synthesis of behavioral evidence says about where performance comes from, and why expertise is the last resource still rationed.
  4. No. 04 · 16 minThe system and the performerHow a system stays invisible while the people inside it stay in plain view, what that costs, and the five moves that make the work show up again.
  5. No. 05 · 20 minBusiness needs and performance needsThree words used as if they meant the same thing, the difference between a symptom and a cause, and the four ways a problem gets worse while nobody is closing it.
  6. No. 06 · 22 minGap analysisTwo values on one measure, where the second one is allowed to come from, and why the distribution of a gap tells you more about its cause than its size ever will.
  7. No. 07 · 22 minThe exemplary performerWhy the exemplary performer is an instrument rather than a role model, how to find one without holding a popularity contest, and how what they have gets given to everybody else.
  8. No. 08 · 24 minCause analysis: the three levelsGilbert’s unit of analysis and the chain of accomplishments it produces, the three levels that chain runs through, and the white space between them, because a remedy aimed at the wrong level cannot work, however good it is.
  9. No. 09 · 26 minCause analysis: the six conditionsSix conditions, three of them arranged around the performer and three carried by them, how to establish which one is binding rather than which one is familiar, and what four decades of research since actually support for each.
  10. No. 10 · 24 minIntervention selectionWhich remedies actually reach which condition, why the available menu is many times longer than the one anybody uses, and what the evidence says about bundling, which is not what most organizations expect.
  11. No. 11 · 32 minLearning metrics and business metricsEvaluation and impact are two different activities carrying one name. What each one measures, who owns it, which instrument belongs to it, and why the difficulty of proving impact is a report on where the work started rather than a problem to be solved with a better questionnaire.
  12. No. 12 · 24 minThe solution requestWhy a competent, sincere, well-informed request is a hypothesis rather than a diagnosis, and the four questions that test one without insulting the person who made it.
  13. No. 13 · 15 minThe cost of non-performanceThe Performance Dividend Calculator: what an intervention actually costs, what the gap is costing while nobody closes it, and the two returns a diagnosis produces. Every number in this series is computed here.
  14. No. 14 · 24 minImplementation and maintenanceThe phase of the method that decides how much of the chosen solution's effect survives. What the performance-improvement tradition settled half a century ago, what four decades of implementation research now puts a number on, and how the phase connects back to the causes, sideways to the chosen solution, and forward to the proof.
  15. No. 15 · 22 minPerformance augmentationAI strengthens what a professional already does. A manager or staff member who owns a business result, and the learning advisor or HR business partner who receives a request for training, can now turn that request into a grounded diagnosis of business, performance and cause, with four reports drafted and ready. What the assistant prepares, what stays the person’s to decide and sign, and how it rates its own reliability when the data runs out.
  16. No. 16 · 20 minThe Value Flip CalculatorHow L&D shows its value before the training starts. The Value Flip Calculator (VFC) prices the decision a diagnosis makes possible: what it does, in which order it is used, what it is good for, and where its limits lie.
  17. The destination · 12 minArets L&D Business ModelsThe destination piece of the series, for the people who receive the requests. Four business models a learning function can run (Order Taker, Learning Specialist, Performance Partner, Value Creator) one divide between HR-driven and business-driven, and the route through the sixteen numbers from the left of that line to the right.
  18. Field guideSolutions that cannot workSeventeen patterns that predict failure before a euro is spent: in training, in measurement, and in the request itself. The training reflex, the performance paradox, training as stagecraft, the inspiration-frustration curve: told as the scenes they actually are, each with an address in one of the numbered white papers. One of three ways into the series: the destination piece orders it by where your function wants to be, the numbered papers by the question you are on, and this guide by the sentence that lands on your desk.