The Six Boxes Approach is our plain English easy-to-learn way of understanding and improving the performance of people in organizations.  It includes 5 elements which, when combined, provide a new and powerful means of driving performance improvement and performance thinking deep into organizations.

1 – The Performance Chain: How behavior produces business results

The Performance Chain depicts the structure of performance in organizations and how it produces the results valued by stakeholders.  Performance happens when behavior influences cause behavior to produce work outputs that are valuable because they contribute to business results.

The Performance Chain gives executives, managers, individual contributors and performance improvement professionals a means of clearly identifying the behavior that contributes to organizational results by producing valuable work outputs.  This cuts through what is often a vague or fuzzy understanding of how the behavior of people actually contributes to an organization's success.

2 – The Six Boxes Model: A comprehensive framework of behavior influences

The Six Boxes Model, for which our Approach is named, is a plain English categorization encompassing every type of behavior influence (or “variable”) known to affect behavior. It is both pragmatic, and based on hard behavior science.

The Six Boxes Model provides a way of understanding, analyzing, and organizing the systems of behavior influence that affect all behavior - to make sense of the many different behavior influences that might be operative, or can be selected, to have an impact in the Performance Chain.

Balancing and “tuning” behavior influences using The Six Boxes Model is a key to maximizing return on investments (ROI) intended to support or improve performance.

3 – A Step-wise Logic: Unpacking and optimizing performance

The third element of the Six Boxes Approach is the How-To component. It is a logical sequence of steps that one can use - formally or informally - in any situation where the goal is to understand and support or improve performance. We teach this easy-to-remember logical sequence as a foundation for applying it in many different ways, from alignment and formal needs or opportunity analysis, to new performance design and implementation planning, to process improvement, management and supervision, as well as leadership development and culture change.

The logic of the Six Boxes Approach supports what we call performance thinking and can be used to develop and communicate the principles of performance improvement to anyone, including both experts in human performance and non-specialists of all kinds. It is easy to learn and remember, and becomes a flexible yet powerful way of thinking as one's experience expands to new challenges and applications.

In the Six Boxes Application Program we teach different types of users to apply this logic in virtually any part of their jobs that involve understanding and improving the performance of people - including their own performance!

4 – Many Users and Applications: Not just for experts

One of the key differences between the Six Boxes Approach and other performance improvement methodologies is that its plain English terminology, simple visual models, and flexible logic make it accessible to anyone in an organization, in any function and at any level. With The Six Boxes Approach we can teach the elements of research-based performance improvement to anyone in the organization to engage them in the process of collaborative performance improvement.

This makes The Six Boxes Approach very powerful as a tool for HRD professionals, for example, who have in the past had difficulty establishing collaborative relationships with their business stakeholders due to language and conceptual barriers. The Six Boxes Approach provides a shared language and way of thinking that has the potential for enormous impact across an organization.

Because The Six Boxes Approach is based on principles of basic behavior science, it is truly applicable to any behavior in any situation. Some of our most memorable application examples involve people outside of formal organizations, such as parents working to understand and manage what happens in their families or teachers managing their classrooms. Moreover, it is this element of The Six Boxes Approach that is leading to an emerging, global community of practice.

The Six Boxes Approach appeals to and can be understood and applied by anyone!

5 – Inside-out plus Top-down: Building a culture of Performance Thinking

The fifth element of The Six Boxes Approach is visionary, yet pragmatic.

What we call performance thinking is the logic and the language of the Six Boxes Approach applied to all kinds of opportunities and challenges involving human performance. In the end, it is this way of thinking about and improving performance that the Six Boxes Approach is designed to support.

We often work with organizations to teach HRD or other staff organizations along with line managers, supervisors and their teams, how to understand and improve performance. This enables them to work together more effectively, with greater impact and improved results.

At the same time, we can teach Executive Leaders the language and concepts of The Six Boxes Approach and provide coaching for them to communicate in this language with their direct reports, formulate plans to execute programs that drive strategy down through their organizations, and decide where and when to apply the Six Boxes Approach for greatest impact.

Imagine the potential for cultural transformation that such shared language and understanding of performance can achieve!

By simultaneously communicating a science-based yet pragmatic understanding of performance from inside out and from the top down, we can help organizations develop performance-focused culture aimed at optimizing the results of human behavior. In so doing, we can also improve the engagement and enthusiasm of employees and contributors at all levels.

In addition, it is our intention to support a global community of practice with participants at varying levels who share the models, language, and logic of performance thinking and thereby collectively expand applications and expertise beyond what any individual or group could possibly do themselves.

To learn how to bring Six Boxes Performance Thinking into your organization, click here.

References

Binder, C. (1995). Promoting Human Performance Technology Innovation: A Return to Our Natural Science Roots. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 8(2), 95-113. While this article might be a bit scholarly for some, it lays out our rationale for strengthening the foundation of performance improvement methodology based on results measurement and behavior science.

Binder C. (1998). The Six Boxes™: A Descendent of Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model. Performance Improvement, 37(6), 48-52. This is a summary of the model, with a focus on how it can help human resources and performance improvement professionals.

Gilbert, T. F. (1978, 1996). Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance. Washington, DC: International Society for Performance Improvement. The key publication of our great friend and mentor, this book contains more ideas at more different levels than most books twice its size.

Teodorescu, T.M., and Binder, C. (2004). Competence is what matters. Performance Improvement, 43(8), 8-12. This joint article with Tina Teodorescu, Carl's former employee and colleague, contrasts the accomplishment-based performance analysis methods that accompany the Six Boxes Model with the current-day fad of “competency modeling.” It describes an application characterized as a Best Practices Study by Carl and a Competence Model by Tina. Great antidote for shallow thinking about what it takes to build and sustain competent performance.

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