Saying "Yes" With 13 Smart Questions

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As performance consultants, we are often called upon when "training" has already been established as the proposed "solution" to the performance problem. We hear requests like: 

"We need training on ABC. Can you do it?" 

In such a situation, we are expected to act quickly and be responsive to the needs of the stakeholders knowing fully that "training" may not be the solution after all! Our first reaction as performance consultants is perhaps to say, "No! Training is not the answer to all performance problems." 

But is there another way to respond? 

 
In one of his many blog posts dedicated to Joe H. Harless, Guy W. Wallace talks about how Joe taught him never to say "No" to training requests and instead say:

“Yes – I can help you – and I can help you even more if we can do a little analysis first!”

Joe Harless was the originator of the term "front-end analysis" (FEA) in his book, An Ounce of Analysis Is Worth a Pound of Objectives, originally published in 1970 (Harless, 1975).

He believed that analysis is more effective at the front rather than at the end. What he meant was that it is helpful to analyze the problem before developing a solution rather than to only conduct a back-end analysis, i.e. training evaluation. 

Joe Harless explained that the purpose of conducting a front-end analysis is to ask a series of “smart questions” in order to prevent spending money on unnecessary activities, to come up with the most appropriate solution(s), and to produce desired performance outcomes and that front-end analysis is about money, first and foremost. 

"It's about how to spend money in ways that will be most beneficial to the organization and the performers in that organization. It is also about avoiding spending money on silly things like instruction when there is no instructional problem; or training everybody in everything when you can get by with training fewer people in a few things; or flying lots of trainees in for a course when a send-out checklist would do." (p. 229)

Harless (1973) shared 13 smart questions to be asked during a front-end analysis:

1. Do we have a problem?
2. Do we have a performance problem?
3. How will we know when the problem is solved?
4. What is the performance problem?
5. Should we allocate resources to solve it?
6. What are the possible causes of the problem?
7. What evidence bears on each possibility?
8. What is the probable cause?
9. What general solution type is indicated?
10. What are the alternative sub classes of solutions?
11. What are the costs, effects, and development times of each solution?
12. What are the constraints?
13. What are the overall goals?

The underlying assumption of conducting a front-end analysis is that training is not always the answer. These 13 questions offer a job-aid. These are not the exact questions to be asked and will need to be modified to make them specific to the problem/challenge being analyzed. However, these questions can help begin a conversation and help analyze the problem to identify the underlying issue(s). 

Here is a video of late Joe H. Harless being interviewed by Guy Wallace as a part of Guy's HPT Legacy Series. Joe Harless was the first in the series. (https://youtu.be/02gkvX5-NV4) 

The HPT Video Series was started by Guy in 2008 as a means of sharing the diversity of HPT Practitioners and Practices in the workplace and academia. The full set of videos, over 160 can be found here. (https://eppic.biz/guys-video-locker-drawer-hpt-practitioner-and-legacy-series/). 

I have been following Guy's work on improving performance since I started working in the learning industry in 1999 and I was humbled and honored to make the HPT Series list at #154 in April 2022 (https://eppic.biz/2022/04/28/hpt-video-2022-taruna-goel/)