As Dave and I talk about in the latest podcast “Be a Designer, not just a Trainer” (iTunes link) “Performance Improvement” or HPT (Human Performance Technology) should be at the top of the food chain.  The following should be understood by us all:

HPT is (should be) in direct coorelation with goals

Learning is a subset of HPT

Training is a subset of Learning

eLearning is a subset of Training

Yet so many times we skip the HPT & Learning parts and go straight for Training or eLearning.  Why is that?

The point was driven home just now as I went to my LinkedIn page.  It asked for my Industry. I tried to find anything about HPT or Performance Improvement or anything like it.  Not there.  But there is eLearning, Education Management, Higher Education, Human Resources, Primary/Secondary Education and Professional Training / Coaching.  But nothing to do with performance improvement.

Too general?  Maybe.  But I don’t think so.  LinkedIn takes what are the most popular categories.  How many of you would consider yourself an HPT professional?  Exactly.  That is why it is not an option.  That is why ISPI has a lower membership (10K) than either ASTD (70K) or the eLearning Guild (35K).  This is backwards.  We should all be ISPI members and THEN ASTD or eLearning Guild members.

Unfortunately, too often too many people jump from goals to training and skip the inbetween.  Why can’t many break free of this rut?  My opinion is that this is what those in executive management expect.  They expect training.  Come to them with some other solution besides training that will work better and their reaction often is, “Why are you doing that?  Aren’t you supposed be doing training?  This isn’t your department.”  I know – I have had it happen to me in the past.

But if we are going to be effective, we have to think of ourselves as Designers of human performance, not Trainers of content.