Dr. Carl Binder is the CEO of the Performance Thinking Network and a leading authority in performance improvement and organizational behavior management. A student of renowned psychologist B.F. Skinner, Carl has spent decades translating behavioral science into practical tools for business performance. He is best known for creating the Six Boxes Model, a widely used framework for diagnosing and improving workplace performance. Carl has worked with global organizations to help leaders focus on measurable work outputs rather than vague competencies. An award-winning author and speaker, he has received recognition from organizations including the American Psychological Association and the International Society for Performance Improvement.
Nolan Hout, Senior Vice President, Growth, Infopro Learning
Nolan Hout is the growth leader and host of this podcast. He has over a decade of experience in the Learning & Development (L&D) industry, helping global organizations unlock the potential of their workforce. Nolan is results-driven, investing most of his time in finding ways to identify and improve the performance of learning programs through the lens of return on investment. He is passionate about networking with people in the learning and training community. He is also an avid outdoorsman and fly fisherman, spending most of his free time on rivers across the Pacific Northwest.
Are organizations focusing on the wrong thing when they talk about skills? In this episode, Dr. Carl and Nolan explore why performance improvement should begin with clear work outputs, not vague competency frameworks.
- Why focusing on work outputs can be more effective than focusing on skills and competencies.
- The origins of the Six Boxes Model and how it helps diagnose performance issues.
- How behavioral science influenced modern performance improvement practices.
- Why traditional competency frameworks often feel vague and difficult to measure.
- How defining clear work outputs simplifies hiring, onboarding and training design.
- The role of expectations, feedback, tools and consequences in shaping performance.
- Why do many training initiatives fail to connect directly to business results.
- How AI can accelerate performance analysis and performance consulting.
- Why L&D teams must evolve from training providers into performance consultants.
If you want to improve performance, focus on the work outputs people produce. Once you know the outputs, you can work backward to the behavior, tools, and skills needed to produce them.
CEO, The Performance Thinking Network LLC.
Introduction
Nolan: Hello everyone and welcome to the Learning and Development podcast sponsored by Infopro Learning. As always, I’m your host, Nolan. We’ve got a very special guest with us today, Dr. Carl Binder. He’s the CEO of the Performance Thinking Network, who crafted the famous Six Boxes Model. Carl is a prolific author and speaker and has won several awards from organizations like the American Psychological Association, International Society for Performance Improvement, Organizational Behavioral Management Network, and many others.
Today we want to talk with Carl about something he posted in ATD about a year ago that has become very popular. It’s the conversation around our obsession with skills and competencies when the focus should actually be on work outputs. We’re excited to get into it.
Thank you for joining us and welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Carl: Thank you, Nolan. I think this is going to be fun. I’m looking forward to it.
Dr. Carl’s Origin Story
Nolan: Before we get into the talking points, I want to learn about your origin story. How did you get into this field?
Dr. Carl: I’ll try to keep it short. I was a philosophy student in college because I thought I wanted to help young people think clearly as a professor. I was in a doctoral philosophy program for a year and quickly decided I didn’t want to do that.
Someone introduced me to the book Walden Two by B.F. Skinner. This was the late 1960s. At first, I was appalled by behaviorism and the idea that people were automatons. But I had a history professor whose wife was a behavior therapy doctoral student, and she suggested I reread the book.
When I did, I realized Skinner had essentially created a natural science of behavior. If applied, it could influence education, therapy, management, and more. I wrote him a fan letter at Harvard, and two weeks later he wrote back. That blew my mind.
He said he was near the end of his career and didn’t have graduate students or a lab, but he told me to stay in touch if I was still interested because perhaps a place could be found for graduate work.
I hitchhiked from Indiana to Cambridge, Massachusetts, found his office, knocked on the door, and he talked to me for an hour. He encouraged me to apply to Harvard. I applied and didn’t get in, but I still studied with him for a couple of years.
Later I worked for ten years with a pioneering behavior scientist who had a laboratory for severely disabled individuals. I applied to Skinner’s measurement technology in a field called precision teaching.
The key concept was fluency, being both quick and accurate at what you do.
Moving Into Business Performance
Dr. Carl: A mentor told me to take what we had learned into business. I started exploring sales performance, where fluent verbal behavior is important. We developed a methodology that dramatically outperformed traditional product knowledge training.
We created a company called Product Knowledge Systems. That’s when I realized there’s much more to performance than just skills. You can train people extremely well, but if expectations are unclear, feedback is missing, or tools aren’t available, training won’t make much difference.
Around that time, I connected with Tom Gilbert, who wrote Human Competence in 1978. He introduced the Behavior Engineering Model, which later became what I simplified into the Six Boxes Model.
Gilbert’s key idea was that behavior is costly. What really matters are accomplishments, the valuable outputs of behavior. That idea led to the field of performance improvement and the International Society for Performance Improvement.
Why Work Outputs Matter More Than Skills
Dr. Carl: If you want to change performance, it’s better to focus on products or outputs of behavior rather than skills.
For example:
- A proposal
- A closed deal
- A recommendation
- A decision
If you know the output, you can analyze the behavior needed to produce it. You can observe competent performers or learn from superstars. The challenge in performance improvement is that the field often uses jargon that business leaders don’t care about. So, we simplified things.
Performance is behavior that produces valuable work outputs, and those outputs contribute to organizational results. Once you define outputs, you can work backwards to determine the required behavior and then apply the Six Boxes Model to improve performance.
The Problem with Skills and Competencies
Nolan: There’s a big conversation today about skills-based organizations. People say skills predict performance. How does that differ from what you’re describing?
Dr. Carl: Competencies are often vague and subjective. For example, someone might ask if you’re a “three or four” in strategic thinking. That varies depending on the situation. Skills can also be vague. Take communication. Communication looks very different when:
- Talking with a direct report
- Selling to a customer
- Persuading a legislator
Instead of starting with skills, start with the output. If you know the output, you can determine the behaviors required. Some behaviors require practice, those are skills. But many tasks simply involve following steps or using job aids. Skills are only part of the behavior required to produce outputs.
Using Outputs in Hiring, Training, and Performance
Dr. Carl: When we analyze roles, we ask:
- Who do you deliver value to?
- What outputs do you produce for them?
These outputs might be documents, decisions, or recommendations. You can map someone’s entire job on a single page in terms of outputs.
From there you can:
- Build behavioral interview questions
- Design onboarding plans
- Structure training around producing outputs
- Measure performance clearly
Instead of saying someone understands something, you ask: Can they produce the output or not?
Defining Good Performance
Dr. Carl: After identifying outputs, the next question is: What makes a good one?
Criteria might include:
- Timeliness
- Quality
- Format
- Accuracy
These criteria usually connect directly to organizational results such as revenue, safety, compliance, or customer satisfaction. Once you define outputs and criteria, performance becomes measurable.
Talking to Performers, Not Managers
Dr. Carl: To define outputs correctly, you must talk to performers, not just managers.
Managers are often too far removed from day-to-day work. By interviewing several strong performers and a few superstars, you can build a clear job profile. Processes are easier to analyze because they involve a series of steps, each producing an output that flows to the next step.
AI and Performance Improvement
Dr. Carl: AI can dramatically accelerate performance analysis.
For example, I once asked ChatGPT to list 100 workplace examples of things that set expectations for performance. In seconds it generated a categorized list that would have taken me a day to create. AI can also help analyze work outputs and behaviors. I don’t think AI will eliminate most jobs. Instead, it will help people perform better by accelerating analysis and design work.
Becoming Performance Consultants
Dr. Carl: Many L&D organizations want to become performance consultants. Often training teams say, “That’s not a training problem.” But if they develop broader performance skills, they can address issues like:
- Unclear expectations
- Poor feedback systems
- Missing tools
- Misaligned incentives
By using frameworks like the Six Boxes Model, L&D can solve real business problems and deliver greater value.
Critique of the Skills-Based Organization Trend
Nolan: How does this approach fit with organizations building skill maps and skills-based systems?
Dr. Carl: I think the skills-based trend is largely jargon, like competency modeling.
Skills rarely transfer neatly across contexts. Even writing skills differ depending on whether you’re writing procedures, reports, or training materials.
Instead of starting with skill lists, start with what people must produce and then determine which skills are necessary.
Learning for Performance
Nolan: At Infopro our tagline used to be “Learning for Performance.” That idea resonates with this conversation.
Dr. Carl: Exactly. L&D should help organizations deliver more value by enabling people to produce better outputs with higher productivity and quality. Skills matter, but they should be derived from the outputs required.
The Power of Job Aids
Dr. Carl: Joe Harless once said: Inside every fat training course is a thin job aid. Often performance problems can be solved with:
- Job aids
- Checklists
- Better expectations
- Feedback from supervisors rather than long training programs.
The goal is maximizing return on investment.
ROI of Performance Interventions
Dr. Carl: Tom Gilbert described the value of an intervention as:
Value of improved outputs ÷ cost of producing the behavior change
Sometimes a simple job aid and clear expectations can produce the same results as a large training program at a fraction of the cost.
Closing Thoughts
Nolan: You can’t improve thirty things at once. Find where the biggest performance impact can happen and focus there.
Dr. Carl: Exactly.
Nolan: Carl, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Carl: Thank you. I had fun.
Nolan: Thanks again. Take care.
Dr. Carl: Take care. Bye.
