Outcomes, Performance, Structure (OPS‪)‬

The purpose of this book is to help you put already-existing performance criteria in a context of your organizational system and assist you in using the criteria to assess problems in your organization. More importantly, this book will help you in designing systemic solutions to the systemic problems you have identified with easy-to-use samples and questions that draw out key areas where the organization needs to improve. Most organizations are not lacking in information; what is most often lacking is a framework that leaders can use to organize and make sense of the information they have. The authors provide such a framework through OPS. They will also help readers engage in “backwards thinking” to identify—and fix—real-world problems with practical solutions.

This book is not an “answer book” in the sense that we present a series of common problems and the accompanying answers. To be sure, many such books exist—such as 101 Ideas for (fill in the blank). Most of these answers are based on someone’s recollection of what they did to solve a problem. The results of the solution, measureable gains, are seldom if ever reported. This book provides a system for discovering your own problems, developing solutions, evaluating success, and gathering information that will help to improve solutions should they fail on the first attempt. It is based upon more than 30 years of research within the discipline of human performance improvement.