Purpose
To identify the steps in the basic needs analysis process and to apply them to a simulated project.
Participants
Any number can play. This activity works best with 12 to 30 participants.
Time
30 to 45 minutes
Handouts
Copies of Needs Analysis, a handout that explains the need analysis process.
Copies of How We Figured Out How To Double Our Monthly Income, a case that illustrates specific application of the process.
Preparation
Master the model. Your success in using this activity format will depend on your fluency with the basic needs analysis model. Carefully study the handout that explains the process. Figure out what is happening in each step and how the steps are linked to each other.
Create a story. The best way to master the model is to make up a fictional case that illustrates the application of the needs analysis process. This is what you will be asking the participants to do, and you need a sample story to prime them. Review the case study to figure out the plot line for your story. You can base your story on one of your own successful projects. If you do so, don't let facts get in the way of a good story that clearly tracks your progress through the needs analysis steps. If you are adventurous, create a story around some popular TV show. If you are fainthearted, plagiarize the case from the handout.
Flow
Brief the participants. Using your own words, present some introductory comments about the basic needs analysis process. Here are some key points that you may want to include in your presentation:
Needs analysis is the essential first step in applying human performance technology to solve performance problems. It is also the first step in the instructional design process.
By applying this systematic process, you avoid solving a wrong problem or a trivial problem. You also avoid solving the right problem with a wrong technique.
Needs analysis involves clearly defining a performance problem as a gap between what you want to happen and what is actually happening, finding reasons for this gap, and closing them with an appropriate intervention.
Distribute the handout that explains the needs analysis process. Point out that the handout identifies the steps in the process and the relationships among them. Ask the participants to read and review the handout. Announce a 3-minute time limit for this activity.
Tell your story. At the end of the time limit, announce that you are going to tell a story of the needs analysis process in action to make the abstract model become concrete. Narrate your story, pausing at the end of each “chapter” to refer to the steps in the process.
Distribute the case. Explain that this case study illustrates the application of the needs analysis process. Suggest that the participants refer to this case study later—after you give them an assignment.
Assign the story-creation task. Divide the participants into teams of three to five members each. It does not matter if some teams have an extra member. Ask each team to begin creating a fictional case study of a successful application of the needs analysis process. The first chapter of the story should clearly illustrate the application of the first step (Identify the ideal performance). The teams have 3 minutes to create the first chapter.
Invite a team to present its first chapter. Give the teams a 1-minute warning. Ask the teams to give finishing touches to the chapter. After another minute, randomly choose a team to send its storyteller to the front of the room. Ask this person to present the first chapter.
Add the second chapter. At the conclusion of the presentation, ask all teams to continue the story they heard by writing the second chapter. Apologize to the members of the other teams. Explain that you are going to ignore the first chapter they had created earlier. Make sure that the teams understand that they are to create the second chapter to continue the first chapter they heard. Explain at the end of the 3-minute time limit, you will randomly select a team (that could even be the team that read its first chapter) and hear the second chapter.
Continue the story writing activity, one chapter at a time. After 3 minutes, select another team and have them read the second chapter. Ask the teams to create the third chapter to continue the ongoing case study. Repeat this process with all teams writing the ensuring chapters and the chapter from one random team being added to the continuing case study.
Conclude with a caveat. At the end of the sixth chapter, congratulate the teams on their depth of understanding of the needs analysis process. However, point out the inherent danger in using a mechanical, step-by-step process. Warn the participants against rigid, obsessive use of the needs analysis steps.
Handout
Needs Analysis
Needs analysis is the process of identifying a suitable solution to a performance problem. You do this by specifying the problem as a gap between the ideal state and actual state, discovering the causes of this gap, and selecting a suitable intervention to remove (or reduce) these causes.
The need analysis process consists of the following six steps:
Step 1. Identify the ideal state
Interview the client and other stakeholders (such as the members of the work team, managers, and customers) to specify the desired performance of typical employees that will produce the results they would like to see. This level of performance is known as performance to standard or the ideal performance.
Step 2. Identify the actual state
Interview the client and other stakeholders to specify the current level of performance of typical employees. Validate this actual performance level by observing the employees, conducting surveys, and analyzing existing records.
Step 3. Specify the performance gap
Use the information collected in the earlier steps to define the performance problem as the difference between the ideal and the actual state. Whenever possible, convert both the ideal state and the actual state to the same units of measurement, and define the gap in specific quantitative terms.
Step 4. Identify possible causes
Continue with additional interviews and other data collection strategies to discover the probable causes for the gap between the ideal and actual states.
Step 5. Identify the root cause
Analyze the probable causes identified in the previous step and organize them into suitable categories (such as lack of skills, lack of motivation, or lack of tools). Through additional analysis and interviews with different stakeholders, narrow the causes to one (or two) root cause that, if removed, will narrow the performance gap.
Step 6. Identify suitable intervention
Review the performance gap and its root cause. Select a suitable intervention: a strategy that removes or reduces the gap by removing the root cause.
Handout
How We Figured Out How To Double Our Monthly Income
Chapter I. The I,deal State
I am the CEO of a small company with four employees and a couple of freelance associates. Among the other job responsibilities that I have, I act as a performance technologist in my company.
One day in September, in one of our staff meetings, somebody asked, “When are we going a pay raise?”
This was a silly question because we were having difficulties even in meeting our current payroll. After laughing at this question, we decided to take it seriously and use it as a trigger for conducting a needs analysis.
I asked the folks to begin at the beginning and suggest the ideal state. Here are different ideas that were offered:
Give everyone a 20 percent pay raise.
Make more money every month.
Get a bank loan and pay people more money every month.
We decided that most of these ideas did not incorporate SMART objectives. Eventually, we decided to stick with this statement of the ideal state:
Make $50,000 every month.
This amount should enable us to give everyone a 10 percent pay raise to everyone and meet our monthly payroll without any difficulty.
Chapter II. The Actual State
We knew that we had difficulty making our monthly payroll frequently. But we did not have any idea on how much money we were making each month. Different people came up with different estimates and they varied significantly. Even our bookkeeper was clueless about our monthly income. When confronted, he mumbled something about wide variances in our earnings and the differences among accruals, receivables, cash flow, and so on. We asked him to get some solid data and report to us during the next meeting. We threatened to fire him if he did not have accurate and up-to-date data.
At the next meeting, our bookkeeper did bring some credible data in the form of a spreadsheet. The bad news was clear for all of us to see: We made an average of $23,487 during the past 8 months. The predicted income for the next 4 months did not appear to be significantly different
Chapter III. The Performance Gap
The performance gap was easy to figure out:
Ideal state: $50,000
Actual state: $23,487
Gap: 50,000 – 23487 = $26,513
Chapter IV. Possible Causes
We asked ourselves the question, “Why are we not earning as much as we should every month?”
There were a lot of wild speculations, and some of them had nothing to do with the performance gap.
Here are a few of the ideas offered by everyone:
Some people are paid bloated salaries.
It’s the economy, stupid.
Our clients are cheapskates.
The government is moving toward socialism.
Most clients want eLearning. We don’t have a credible track record in that area.
We are not listening to our customers.
We don’t have the bells and whistles that the other consultants flaunt.
We need a marketing person.
Eighty percent of our income comes from two major clients.
We are not charging enough. Look at Tom Peters. He charges $20,000 for each keynote speech he delivers.
We should develop and sell products. We have reached our capacity in providing consultation and conducting instructor-led workshops.
Chapter V. The Root Cause
After a lot of discussing about the possible causes and yelling at each other, we settled down to this statement of the root cause:
We are not marketing our products and services.
Chapter VI. The Intervention
After talking about the cause behind the root cause, we figured out that we lack sufficient capacity to handle the demands of marketing. So our intervention was to hire a hot-shot marketer.
Chapter VII. Epilogue
We had a clear idea of the intervention, but we were caught in a Catch 22: We cannot hire a marketing person unless we made more money and we cannot make more money until we hired a marketing person. So we are still continuing our business as usual, mumbling philosophical inanities like, “Money is not everything”.