I appreciate the reference to the Performance Chain. It’s a pretty simple idea, but I think is probably the most important thing I learned from Tom Gilbert and Joe Harless — how to directly link the behavior and performance improvement efforts we make to business results — through the work outputs. There’s lots of talk among performance improvement, training, and management professionals about focusing on results. But, to me, the Performance Chain makes that connection very tangible.

on the performance question…I’m not a fan of hierarchy any more than the next guy but i don’t think that has too much to with it really. A flat, networked organization can go out of business just as fast as an old dinosaur if communication, social networking and learning aren’t focused on customer requirements and the internal process that achieve them. To extend Neil Postman’s notion from entertainment to web 2.0, we can sometimes be at risk of “amusing ourselves to death”.

I hear you on the IT department, though.

That doesn’t comport well with organizations that rely on a hierarchical, through-channels approach. Although I don’t think it makes sense to throw structure to the wind, “organizational performance” can be a bureaucrat’s euphemism for “we don’t need that here.”

Had most functional groups waited for the I.T. department to enable, let alone encourage, web pages, we’d be having this conversation through TeleVideo 950s and acoustic coupler modems.

“…but now I’m all about Twitter.”