Performance technology as a means to improve organizational and individual performance is often shroud in complex language, rarefied theory, and bewildering applications. Several excellent publications either elucidate Performance Technology’s whys and whats or make clear its many hows, but few adequately and comprehensively clarify both.

Authors Darlene Van Tiem of University of Michigan, James Moseley of Wayne State University, and Joan Conway Dessinger of the Lake Group have recently developed the second edition of Fundamentals of Performance Technology: A Guide to Improving People, Process, and Performance. This guidebook broadly explains performance technology as an established, systematic, and reproducible method of improving organizational and individual performance (the HPT Model). It also provides applications of performance technology at work in a variety of environments, and proffers dozens of performance tools to help the reader improve his or her own performance technology practice.

So what is Performance Technology? According to the authors, performance technology is the systematic process of linking business goals and strategies with the workforce responsible for achieving goals. Moreover, performance technology practitioners study and design processes that bring about increased performance in the workplace using a common methodology to understand, inspire, and improve. And, finally, performance technology systematically analyzes performance problems and their underlying causes and describes exemplary performance and success indicators.

Van Tiem et al have authored a guidebook that makes performance technology understandable and achievable by assembling an easy-to-read, easy-to-apply, and comprehensive explanation of the factors affecting workplace behavior and using a commonsense approach and consistent structure.