S2Pro© Model of Speed To Proficiency
The ‘Speed To Proficiency Model [S2Pro©]’ was developed through five years of extensive rigorous doctorate research at SCU Australia titled “Modelling Accelerated Proficiency in Organisations: Practices and Strategies to Shorten Time-to-Proficiency of the Workforce” (May 2018). The model was developed by Raman K. Attri, founder or S2Pro© Research.
This model provides organizations and practitioners with a detailed framework consisting of proven 6 business practices and 24 strategies to accelerate time to proficiency of the workforce. The model is derived from the collective wisdom of over 85 industry experts and global thought leaders with proven project experience in reducing time to proficiency in different contexts. This practice-based scholarly study revealed universal laws of speed, employed by over 50 leading organizations from different business sectors reduce time to proficiency by up to 80%.
First-ever practice-oriented model fully grounded on rigorous scholarly research methodologies.
Emerged from the largest sampling size employed till date for any comparable study spanning 85 participants from 7 countries.
Reviewed and aligned by leading thought leaders, practitioners, and academic researchers.
Authentic, credible, and representative of a wide range of contexts and settings and largely generalizable across the board.
Derived from aggregated practices/strategies used by renowned hands-on specialists in reducing time to proficiency significantly.
Reliability checked with proven evidence of successful time to proficiency reduction in 66 project cases.
The scale and magnitude of the study spanning across a range of settings makes this model highly authentic, relevant, representative and valid. The Speed to proficiency model [S2Pro©] is derived from a massive study conducted with 85 renowned thought leaders, specialists and practitioners participants from 7 countries. They contributed 66 successful bounded start-to-end project cases in which they reduced the time to proficiency of employees tremendously. The contributed project cases represented contexts from 10 economic sectors, 20 business sectors and 28 industry groups.
Globally
85
Industry experts
From
50
Organizations
Across
7
Countries
Contributed
66
project cases
Set in
20
business sectors
Covering
15
critical skills
Employed in
15
job roles
The trustworthiness of a study’s findings in terms of its credibility, authenticity, reliability, validity, generalizability, and acceptability depends on who participated, how it was conducted, how data was gathered, how data was analyzed, how conclusions were drawn and how it was tested or validated. The model we developed in this research is highly credible and valuable in multitude of business scenarios due to highly rigorous and systematic research approaches applied throughout the study.
Industry thought leaders, business practitioners, learning specialists, and performance consultants who had the unquestionable authority and in-depth knowledge of various aspects of workforce performance challenge such as speed to proficiency, accelerated proficiency, accelerated performance, time to proficiency or similar areas.
Participants were selected based on their experience in a completed project with the goal of accelerated proficiency or reducing time-to-proficiency. Evidence of experience were checked from written media (e.g., industry reports, interviews, company newsletters, conference presentations, webinars, books, journal or magazine article authorship, white papers, blog posts, LinkedIn resume, internet profiles, academic CVs, responses to research questionnaires, personal communication, etc.). Participants also included the individuals who received any recognition or award for their work in related area (e.g., industry awards, nominations, etc.) or individuals associated/affiliated with a society, forum, client, company or organisation whose main charter or work was known to be in areas related to speeding up time to proficiency.
371 participants qualifying the strict experience criteria were approached. 85 top notch leaders/practitioners participated in the study from 7 countries, hailing from 24 different industries, serving mostly as CEOs, VPs, directors and consultants or equivalent, with average experience of over 20 to 30 years years in industry, and half of them holding doctorate degrees in relevant fields.
A massive data was collected in this large-scale research study:
A qualitative research approach to build a “rich understanding” of the issue with the goal to find ‘what works’ was used in this study. Project leaders were interviewed in-depth and were asked to detail a project case from start to end covering five major segments typical of any improvement-driven project on the lines of DMAIC concept:
(1) Define: business challenge or problem of time-to-proficiency to be solved
(2) Measure: description of the previous solution in place (if any) to reduce time-to-proficiency and previous results
(3) Analyze: issues or challenges with the previous solution and root cause of the problem
(4) Implement: description of the new solutions or strategies implemented to reduce time-to-proficiency (Implement); and
(5) Control: the results in terms of reduction in time-to-proficiency (quantitative, qualitative or anecdotal results)
Data were analysed using two powerful data analysis methods most commonly used in scholarly qualitative research studies: thematic analysis and matrix analysis to identify the themes and patterns in the data.
Thematic analysis was used to identify similar and contrast patterns with reference to the other project variables and contextual elements. The major patterns are noted and clustered into themes. Themes are combined into overarching themes based on relationships and conceptual similarities. Several data analysis tools like concept mapping were used to integrate several perspectives of data analysis into the final model.
Themes and data of bounded project cases was arranged in the form of a matrix or a table of columns and rows to arrange the data in one place). Matrix analysis was then used to perform within-case analysis and cross-case analysis to compare the practices used among project cases across various contexts to understand the dynamics of the project cases within itself and then across the project cases by stacking rows of data from other project cases.
The result was:
Two power-packed, practice-oriented, fully guided tools evolved out of this research:
Rigorous methodologies were applied to ensure quality of data as well as quality of the data analysis, more specifically 3 major aspects to meet rigor standards set by academics: (1) Objectivity / confirmability; (2) Reliability / dependability / auditability; (3) Internal validity / credibility / authenticity. These included:
Deemed largely applicable across various contexts, settings and industries:
The Speed To Proficiency Model [S2Pro©] is based on powerful findings that six business practices are employed by leading organisations almost universally in every context, job, and business sector to reduce time-to-proficiency of their employees. These 6 practices were implemented through a set of twenty-four strategies proven successful in various contexts. The strategies employed were much beyond the boundaries of conventional training interventions. The job itself acted as the primary mechanism to accelerate proficiency.
Define business-driven proficiency measures in terms of expected business outcomes from a job role
Develop a proficiency reference map of all the inputs, conditions and roadblocks that determine or influence how required business outcomes are being produced in a job role
Sequence an efficient proficiency path of activities and experiences ordered to produce the desired business outcomes in the shortest possible time
Manufacture accelerated contextual experiences by leveraging on-the-job opportunities or training interventions in a compressed time-frame
Promote an active emotional immersion through engagements, consequences, stakes, feedback and proficiency assessments
Set up a proficiency eco-system, providing timely support to performers while doing the job such as enabling job environment, highly involved manager, structured mentoring from experts, purposeful social connectivity with peers, leveraging subject matter experts and on-demand performance support systems
The Speed To Proficiency Model [S2Pro©] consists of a closed-loop system with input-output-feedback interactions among six practices/processes . We found that in every one of the 66 project cases, all the six business practices were presented to a varying degree. Each practice in itself acts as a self-contained process contributing towards improving time to proficiency. However, implementing any one of the practices/processes in itself would not lead to significant and sustainable results. The best results in shortening time-to-proficiency are achieved when all of these six practices/processes are correctly orchestrated together as an integrated ‘change management system’. The outcome, however, depends on the degree of the orchestration of all the practices/processes. This integration as a closed-loop system leads to a significantly shorter time to proficiency. Evidence showed that up to 80% reduction in time to proficiency is possible using this model.
We are in process of building an extensive know-how around this model in form of blog posts, publications, learning resources, reports, groups, and discussions. if the model intrigued you to learn it more, here are some ways you can know more about this model:
Read 400+ pages of detailed doctorate research thesis – restricted as of now for public access for next 1 year 🙁
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I am a performance scientist working, writing, researching and speaking on speeding up learning, performance, expertise, and leadership. Follow me to the world of learning for the accelerated world.
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