CASE STUDY:
Performance Support for Management Decision-Making

Stanley E. Malcolm, Ph.D.

Business Objective: The AMP Facilitator is designed to help executives, managers, project leaders, and teams apply a rigorous, consistent decision-making process without training or support from outside facilitators.

Significance: Applies EPSS to analytical tasks, with as much or more power than when addressing business "processing" tasks like customer service, sales, or accounting. Formerly, the Aetna Management Process (AMP) was very difficult to apply without a trained facilitator. Now, managers come to the AMP Facilitator software knowing little about the process, and conclude with a competent business plan (mission, critical success factors, environmental scan, gaps, objectives, action steps, and implementation strategy). Learning happens but is secondary to the ability to do.

This is an ancient design in computer-years, being first deployed in 1991. As such, the interface is rather "long in the tooth." Still, it was incredibly effective as one of the first implementations of electronic performance support.

Figure 1. The AMP Facilitator (20k) - A performance support tool for decision-making designed to accomodate small-group as well as individual use. Note the group process advice in the "Guide" pop-up.

Copyright Aetna, Inc., 1992. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

About the Author: Stan Malcolm serves as a coach to companies wishing to develop or review their strategies for performance support, learning technologies, and/or corporate learning issues generally. Formerly, he headed learning technologies and performance support initiatives at Aetna, Inc. He can be reached at Stan@Performance-Vision.com or 860-295-9711.