The Four Truths of performance improvement

Two of the Theory of Constraints mailing lists have been discussing (somewhat tediously) the importance of "change" and creating the right behaviors to make the change happen.  A recent poster linked to Huthwaite's The Four Truths:

Achieving a measurable, tangible and significant change involves far more than just training....  In short, any such effort must adhere to the Four Truths of sales performance improvement.

• Truth One: Organizations don’t make changes easily, nor do they make changes on demand. Only those things that are measured will get done; the engine of change is measurement.
• Truth Two: Adults only learn in the context of what they judge to be important and relevant to them as individuals. Just because it’s good for the company does not mean it will necessarily be embraced by individual sales people.
• Truth Three: Spending time in classrooms is an expensive proposition. Classroom time should be devoted to the kinds of learning that require interpersonal practice and feedback.
• Truth Four: Organizations don’t make change suddenly. Success will only come from an initiative that nests training experience in a process that includes reinforcement, coaching, and quantified, objective, individual feedback.

Learn more in our white paper The Four Truths of Behavior Change.

The focus for Huthwaite is the sales process (they are the SPIN Selling folks).  But this set of Truths seems to work for just about any change proposition.

The Theory of Constraints discussions tend to flow along the lines of the above.  They (we?) attempt to lay out the situation as logically as possible in order to check that we have all the facts and to draw conclusions as to what should happen next.  All the TOC thinking process tools are designed this way.  Remember, this is not used to force a specific conclusion, it is used to check that we have all the information that drives us to a specific intervention (or "injection" in TOC-speak).