ABSTRACT
Most human performance improvement practitioners, as well as managers and
other stakeholders, are eager to fi nd a solution or select a performance improve-
ment intervention. The previous chapter explored the role of the analyst. You
learned that one key tenet of HPI work is a strong grounding in performance
and cause analysis. In other words, the urge must be resisted to jump to an
immediate solution to performance problems. The interventions that are even-
tually applied to the performance problem or opportunity should result from
careful analysis. The reason for this is that careful analysis increases the proba-
bility of identifying and choosing the appropriate intervention. Without analysis,
solutions are unlikely to be effective-and may even make matters worse. Like
physicians who are advised to at least “do no harm” in treating their patients,
HPI practitioners should avoid causing more problems than they solve. That can
happen if the wrong intervention is selected to solve a problem or if it is chosen
in haste.
