Donald C. Fisher, Ph.D., is currently the Executive Director of MSQPC - The
Quality Center (Mid-South Quality/Productivity Center), a partnership between the Memphis Regional Chamber
and the Southwest
Tennessee Community College in Memphis.
Dr. Fisher's twenty years of management development experience includes consulting on
corporate training and productivity improvement programs for several of the world's
largest corporations. His experience and his understanding of the
contemporary workplace
and its workers add special insight to the PATS on-the-job training program.
Q - I know that you have developed and trademarked the Process Activated Training
System® or "PATS." Would you please describe PATS
to our listeners?
The PATS approach integrates training into the workflow - the way you do your normal
job. The reason I developed this is as follows. Back in 1987, I started reading about
process management and getting a good understanding of it. As a result, I came to the
conclusion that I needed to define learning as a process - the way people learn, the way
instructors teach needed to be defined as a process. I identified some best practice
benchmarks. The first was the United States Navy. I wanted to learn how they trained
people on critical skills and tasks and how they did so in such a quick manner.
Then I benchmarked IBM in New York State, focusing on how they taught people some of
their critical skills. I came to the conclusion that the most critical form of learning in
any organization worldwide was on-the-job training - that everyone really learned, not
through text books, or through curriculum developed by well-know authors, but by peers
through peer knowledge. I identified those peers, those best practice employees, imparting
the knowledge as subject matter experts.
That's how I got the idea of the Process Activated Training System. It identifies about
10 to 15% of employees in any organization as best practice workers whom we call subject
matter experts. They're the ones who informally train co-workers in these best practices.
What we decided to do with PATS was to formalize an informal process - we formalized
on-the-job training. We've also given the teachers an identification - we call them
subject matter experts (SME). They're the best practice workers and they teach best
practices and deploy these throughout the organization. In a nutshell, that's how PATS got
started and how it works inside an organization.
Q- As I recall you benchmarked about 100 different organizations to develop PATS,
right? Absolutely. I conduct a lot of Baldrige assessments around the world. I just
finished a global assessment for a division of the Swiss Air group. I go into
organizations and look at how processes are documented. I look at how employees learn and
how employees train. Based on all of this - since 1988 I've been conducting Baldrige
assessments - I brought all of this together and developed the PATS system. So that's how
this has evolved. It's been an evolutionary process. So within this PATS system we're
using the best of the best practices from companies such as Volvo, IBM, Hitachi, and many
other companies around the world. It's been a great experience of going into organizations
and looking at best practices through the assessment door.
Q - I understand that you even went to the United States Air Force base where they
train fighter pilots. Right. I spent ten days there as a senior Air Force judge. They
applied for the Secretary of the Air Force Quality Award. One thing I discovered is the
way fighter pilots are trained is that they all have different best practices. If they're
having a problem, they get some of the pilots together as a team. One of the things they
identify is "first step, last step." They could all agree on these two, but
couldn't always agree on the steps that went in between. Through that I developed one of
the main PATS forms which I call a fast and dirty flow chart. This process worksheet was
designed to keep flow charting a process very simple. We found through our research that
most workers, especially in the manufacturing sector and service sector get rather
intimidated by two things: flow charting a process and seconding when you're using
educational or training terminology.
We use only process terminology when describing both teachers and learners and when
describing the forms that we use. The process worksheet is a one-page flow chart. With
this form, we ask a team of subject matter experts, those who exhibit best practices,
inside an organization to complete the form. An example is in a hospital in another state
where we've trained over 200 nurses in the PATS system. We had identified about 5 subject
matter experts and asked them to collect a blood sample - each of them did it a different
way. After this we had them sit down and work together. We had them identify and process
and complete the flow chart form for that process. (We have optional software available
for PATS.) This information then rolls over to the second form called the baseline
assessment of process. This second form gives the SMEs an opportunity to consent on the
best practice for a particular process. We only want SMEs writing scripts and curriculum.
These forms and methods help reduce process cycle time and learning cycle time. The
third form is called the learning session plan. It's like a teaching script. This assures
that teacher (SME) follows the best practice when teaching and that therefore the learner
is learning the best practice. This script is done in a show-tell-demonstrate curriculum.
We call learners in our system the PAL (Process Activated Learner). In traditional
learning you only get a 10 - 15% learning retention rate. With PATS you get a 45 - 55%
learning retention rate. Even though they have to stay with the script, the teams can have
a lot of fun with this learning. Every script has a behavioral objective base so that we
can measure if there has been any change in behavior weeks or months after the training is
complete. The first two forms give a standardization throughout the system on the
performance of a particular process and the third form gives a standardization throughout
the system of the teaching of a given process. I have not seen another system that does
this. We designed it as a closed loop system. The training script is a very unique part of
this system.
Q - I understand that you have some other forms that are part of PATS system too,
right? Yes. It's a continuation of the closed loop system. We have an observation
report (which the software prints out automatically). With this form the SME can observe
the learner several weeks after the initial training to assure that the learner is
actually practicing what he or she has been taught. And 100% accurate performance is the
only acceptable score. Otherwise some further training needs to take place with that
individual. And there is a reward system association with the observation form. Everything
about PATS is very pro-active. Also associated withPATS are SME certification and process
certification.
Q - Please tell us the types of customers who have benefited, and can benefit from
PATS. United States Postal Service, logistics business, hospitals, vehicle
manufacturing, hotel, utility, service, nonprofit, colleges. Any type organization can use
PATS.
Q - Why is retaining job knowledge so important to any organization? Any company
or organization with high attrition has valuable knowledge walking out the door unless
they're using PATS to document and retain that knowledge.
Q - How is PATS associated with ISO 9000 and ISO 9001/2000? PATS is very
compatible with ISO and helps organization meet many of the ISO requirements - especially
in the area of training and procedures.
Q - How does an organization get started using the system? We have a
two-day workshop in which we train about five to six teams of subject matter experts. They
work on developing some of their own actual work processes during the workshop and then
are given assignments to continue documenting processes after the workshop is completed.
Within a month's time an organization can have 60 to 80 processes documented. A hospital
with which I'm working has documented about 700 processes within 3 months.
Contact Dr. Fisher today!
