The Designed Change Institute

Performance Shaping Factors

Most human behavior is "unintentional", carried out automatically. Unaware behavior can be costly unless you shape it to work for you. Performance Shaping Factors (PSFs) do enough expensive and deadly damage that aerospace and complex technology people take them very seriously. Presently, business and industry personnel take the expense of PSFs as part of the cost of doing business. Some even fire the people who fail and hire others (and spend millions training them) who perform the same way in the same situations.

Complex facilities require the careful identification of all factors in the workplace which can alter how employees perform their jobs. PSFs are similar to the factors such as humidity, temperature and voltage which control the accurate operation of computer systems. When you design the PSFs so that they shape the performance you need, workers and managers together become happily productive.

The Performance Shaping Factors are (1) Stress, which alters perception, thought and action, (2) Culture, which controls thought and behavior, (3) The Meaning of Behavior, which determines the nature and quality of actions, (4) SELF Confidence (as distinct from conditioned confidence) which assures accurate and productive work and (5) The Past controls today's performance.

(1) Stress

Stress causes arousal and attention. The attention can be toward or away from work. Work congruent stress (WCS) is likely to increase accuracy, motivation and productivity. Work incongruent stress (WIS) supports distraction and error. Effective management by supervisors and workers alike requires accurate understanding of types and levels of stress, their effects on perception and thought, and their consequences for productivity and accuracy. You can make sure that most work related stress is self induced and work congruent.

(2) Culture

"How we do things around here" is the Corporate Culture, the group climate. Excellent performance depends upon each individual learning to be expert concerning the impact of group culture on his own and on others' performance. Excellent organizational performance depends upon a culture which assures such performance as part of its life. A group will do what it has done. New members will absorb it , perform it and pass it on. Its pressure to conform is irresistible as long as it remains unaware. You can make it aware to reduce its control.

(3) The Meaning of Behavior

Behavior has meaning. Excellent performance can be done to please a manager and disappear to punish. Poor performance may be to get group approval, and so can productivity and accuracy. Use behavior's meaning as a tool to identify the flow of behavior in a group, for changing group culture and to understand your problems with a group or individual. You will discover that most of that wasted time (high in manufacturing, higher in offices) is being used to express interpersonal meaning. You can even change the performance shaping power of feelings when you change their interpersonal meaning, like changing a threat into a challenge.

(4) SELF Confidence

Empowerment, self confidence, self esteem and self knowledge are widely recognized PSFs. Self esteem produces great benefits, and has troublesome pitfalls. Empowerment of employees is a contradiction. It contains within it the subtle fact that when one person is empowered by another, the stature of the "empowerer" increases, and the status of the "empowered" becomes unempowered. Self confidence, like confidence in an automobile, is accurate knowledge of what that car or person is. Conditioned confidence, a major cause of error and disaster, comes from exaggeration. Confidence comes from accurate assessment.

(5) The Past

Most behavior is controlled by past learned responses, unawarely carried out today. This is a very efficient process, provided that the behavior learned in the past fits today. It frequently does not, and unintended actions shaped by the past cost billions. Such automatic responses are lawful and predictable. They can be interrupted and, ultimately, totally blocked so that they can no longer interfere with your productivity and accuracy.

For more information see Sargent, Thomas O. The Behavioral and Medical Effects of Stress.

© Copyright 1993 Designed Change Institute, Virginia City, Montana

Text on Performance Shaping Factors