Carl Binder, Ph.D.
Introduction to Six Boxes Performance Thinking – An Accomplishment Based Approach
This workshop provides an overview of an individual and organizational performance improvement methodology that has been developed and refined in over 35 years of application in corporate and non-profit organizations worldwide. Evolved from elements of Thomas F. Gilbert’s accomplishment based approach described in his groundbreaking book, Human Competence, Performance Thinking® tools and applications leverage two simple visual models and 21 plain English words to enable leaders, managers and performance consultants to define performance and configure solutions to develop or improve it. Extracted from a three-day workshop and project-based certification program, this session provides a conceptual overview, introduces several tools, and gives participants an opportunity to conduct conversations with colleagues yielding lists of valuable accomplishments, or what Binder calls work outputs. Identifying accomplishments as “countable nouns” is both the most difficult and most pivotal part of the paradigm shift introduced by Gilbert: from behavior to valuable accomplishments. The Six Boxes® Model, which evolved Gilbert’s Behavior Engineering Model, provides a more robust framework than Skinner’s three-term contingency for integrating all the variables that influence performance, comprising the entire system of behavior influences.