WELCOME BACK
Change the set of disturbances, and the organization, without itself changing, is evaluated “bad” instead of “good.” (Ashby, 2004, p. 114)
A lot has happened in such a short time for ISPI and its seminal publications. We appreciate everyone's patience as we transitioned to a new publisher. It has been a short delay, but we are now back to publishing novel approaches to improving human performance across different industries and organizations.
This year (2022), ISPI successfully conducted its first face-to-face conference since the pre-pandemic era. It's been a while since everyone has been able to visit each other physically. Everyone was glad to see and hear traditional and foundational models that helped form ISPI into what it is today. Participants were also excited to hear about many new models and approaches that could be incorporated into the ISPI practitioners' toolbox. During the second day, various breakout sessions provided presentations and workshops that focused on specific topics relating to ISPI and to the standards of ISPI. The former came from several keynote speakers (e.g., Kevin Oakes, Will Thalheimer, Lisa Toenninges) and panel sessions that included Paul Elliot, Al Folsom, Jamie Torchiana, and Time Quiram.
At the same time, working behind the scenes was the transformation to a new publisher for both Performance Improvement Quarterly (PIQ) and Performance Improvement Journal (PIJ). Both journals will now be published through Allen Press. If you are reading this editorial, you are reading the first issue of PIQ that Allen Press has published for the ISPI community.
In our last PIQ issue with Wiley, we published all accepted articles with the understanding that we would be working with a new publisher moving forward. In our previous editorial with Wiley (Turner, 2022), we asked readers and members to be patient through this process, and you were. We, the editorial staff at PIQ, appreciate this patience. We are now ready to begin revamping, improving, and providing a better journal for ISPI members situated at the intersection between theory and practice, supporting academia and practice.
To begin this new revitalization of PIQ, we want to update our editorial staff. Initially, we had two associate editors, Rose Baker and Frank Fu. Frank Fu stepped down at the end of 2021. We appreciate his contribution to PIQ and wish him luck in the future. We want to extend a special “Thank You” to Frank Fu for his contributions and service to our journal.
We will replace Frank Fu with an equally qualified associate editor to fill this void, allowing us to better serve ISPI members and our journal's broader international readership. We are glad to announce that Quincy Brown from the University of Southern Mississippi will join the PIQ editorial team. This change assures that PIQ will have a model for sustainability and longevity moving forward. Please join us in welcoming Quincy Brown to the editorial staff of PIQ.
WHO ARE WE?
Judith Hale posed an interesting question in one of her sessions at the recent ISPI conference. She asked participants how they would describe what we do as “Human Performance Technologists (HPT).” She provided a few terms to start the conversation: systemic, feasibility, and sustainability. Judith and others mentioned HPT practitioners as stewards of information, practice, or both. I see our new role as a Boundary Spanner for our customers, internal and external—connecting the human elements of an organization. Sustainability was repeated in a few sessions as Belia Nel discussed strategy sustainability for assuring that our actions contribute to the overall system strategy of the organization and customer. A strategy must be systemic across all levels of an organization for it to be sustainable. However, it must also be flexible and adaptive so that the organizational systems can pivot when the strategy is forced to change. The term value was prevalent in several presentations as Jack Welch and Patty Welch drove home the importance of providing evidence for the positive impact we provide to our customers through evaluating and measuring “Return on Investment” (ROI).
Several other essential presentations were offered at the recent ISPI conference. Much of the content related to the foundational standards and models that make up ISPI, but other presentations provided different lenses for potential areas for ISPI to grow in today's interconnected global environment. A few examples of these expanded areas of content included my presentation on “Decision Making in Extreme Uncertainty” and other presentations on “Virtual Training in the Coast Guard” by Erin Sheridan, “Plain English with Business Stakeholders” by Carl Binder, and “Neuroscience Tools for Peak Performance Teams” by Thomas Agrait.
It was great to see so many participants from the United States Coast Guard (USCG) at this year's conference. It has been a while since the Coast Guard has been able to attend ISPI conferences for various reasons (e.g., pandemic). Many people outside of ISPI do not recognize the contributions that the USCG provides in applying and testing the principles provided by ISPI in their everyday practice. The awards ceremony from the conference is just one example showing how active the USCG has been in applying the principles and methods of ISPI.
These are only a few examples highlighting that ISPI is a growing and emerging field of practice that provides evidence-based research to support its models and methods. This support partly comes from the research published in ISPI's journals, PIQ and PIJ.
MOVING RESEARCH IN ISPI
As a professional society, we must continue pushing the limits to remain relevant in today's complex global environment. The few examples listed above show how scholars and practitioners in ISPI continue to grow into new fields while staying up-to-date with current research and with the foundational principles of ISPI. From the same perspective, researchers attempt to keep hold of ISPI's foundations while pushing the limit in new fields of study. These researchers introduce new theories or models from other fields of study, develop contextually relevant theories for ISPI practitioners, and test and evaluate existing models and practices while also challenging the field to adopt new theories and methods from other disciplines. This extends our foundational concept of continuous improvement and organizational learning.
One of our goals at PIQ is to provide research relevant to the fields of “Human Performance Improvement” and “Human Performance Technology.” We want to challenge the knowledge base for the field of ISPI while being stewards of this knowledge for our customers. We are also tasked with challenging scholars and practitioners to extend their models and utilize newer theories that may be effective in similar contextual settings for other disciplines.
KEEPING UP WITH FUTURE JOBS OF 2025 AND BEYOND
The IBM report titled “The Enterprise Guide to Closing the Skills Gap” highlighted human factors as essential in developing skills and talent for the future workforce (LaPrade et al., 2019). The report's general sentiment for organizations today is to develop human factors:
Interest in skills development has extended beyond the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) to the entire C-suite. CEOs have certainly registered the importance of workforce capabilities, according to our latest C-suite Study. After being on the back burner for a few years, people skills are among the top three external forces CEOs expect to impact the business, just behind technology and market factors. (p. 3)
This shift in skills, from digital and technical, to more behavioral, is partly due to achieving a point of saturation in digital and technical skills on a global level while producing a gap in behavioral skills. This point is driven by the following: “entirely new areas of expertise, such as data science and machine learning, have saturated nearly every industry” (LaPrade et al., 2019, p. 3).
This same focus can also be found in global trends in The World Bank's World Development Report 2019, titled “The Changing Nature of Work.” Their report highlighted that the “demand for advanced cognitive skills, sociobehavioral skills, and skill combinations associated with greater adaptability is rising” (p. 6); these identified skills are human factor skills. The World Bank's report highlighted the global saturation point in technical and industrial employment. The three essential skills that have become increasingly important in labor markets globally include “advanced cognitive skills such as complex problem-solving, sociobehavioral skills such as teamwork, and skill combinations that are predictive of adaptability such as reasoning and self-efficacy” (p. 3).
FUTURE SKILLS IN NEED OF DEVELOPMENT
In both reports (IBM, World Bank), the skills listed in Table 1 were identified as needing further development to meet the future demands of work beyond 2025. In looking at this list of skills for the future workplace, we need to identify where we can make an impact. Where can ISPI make the most significant impact on the future of work? Is it in the methods and tools available in ISPI's practitioner's toolboxes? Is it in ISPI's knowledge base that is accessible to members? Is it through the knowledge disseminated through ISPI publications (PIQ, PIJ)? Is it from all the above platforms as an aggregate? As we review these questions, providing a counterfactual perspective is critical. From this critical viewpoint, one would ask: Is ISPI providing the much-needed methods and tools to meet and exceed the requirements of the future workforce? I would recommend concentrating on this last critical question to begin moving ISPI to be more relevant for the future of work in 2025 and beyond.
CONCLUSION
The skills identified in Table 1 provide one perspective and only touch on some of the global issues around the future of work. Other bodies of literature also look at the future of work. One example can be found in Santana and Cobo's (2020) review of literature on the future of work. Their research identified the future of work themes from 2015 to 2019: talent management, telework, wage inequality, employment, satisfaction, career, innovation, organizational commitment, corporate social responsibility, older workers, automation, vulnerable workers, and leadership. A breakdown for each of these themes is provided in their research article.
As with any training and developmental program, the contextual setting and conditions must be accounted for, and the proper skills for the task and working conditions must be identified before training and development can become successful. This point was highlighted by Santana and Cobo (2020) in the following statement: “An important challenge for management (in their selection and training programmes) will be to determine which competences will better fit certain current and future tasks” (p. 860). Identifying gaps, the proper skills required, and the training or developmental initiatives to develop these necessary skills will become even more essential moving forward. These developmental initiatives will also need to be available for the skills identified for the future of work, not just those skills we have used in the past. As the opening citation states in this editorial, the organization (ISPI) must change to meet the needs of the environment (future of work) to be considered a “good” organization (goal set to deliver value). This challenge is for researchers, practitioners, and the larger ISPI membership. This will make ISPI more relevant as a leader in developing the skills necessary for the future of work.
Are we ready?
