The story of Tom Gilbert.

If someone wrote the story of behavior analysis, it would have many elements typical of a great novel: settings, central characters, a plot, conflicts, a narrative arc, and resolution. And while the story would have many well-known heroes in behavior analytic history -- such as B. F. Skinner or Fred Keller -- Tom Gilbert would undoubtedly play a role that told of his innovation, hard work, and triumph.

Tom Gilbert perhaps received his greatest attention from people who work in human performance technology, or HPT. HPT, also known as human performance improvement, represents a field of practice geared towards improving human performance in the workplace. HPT has several methods that enhance any organization's performance. Many behavior analysts who practice Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) use techniques from HPT.

Gilbert established fundamental concepts in HPT and offered cost-effective methods for systematically changing human behavior (Chyung, 2008). Gilbert made several distinctions that continue to shape the field. For instance, he noted that performance differs from behavior and that the measure of performance appears in the degree of accomplishment.

Take the example of a call center representative. The rep can have a pleasant or annoyed tone of voice, speak slowly or quickly, use overly technical product language, or more easily understandable terms. All of the previous examples describe behavior. The outcomes of behavior, performance, could include the number of questions answered clearly. And the client’s satisfaction with the call could serve as an accomplishment. Gilbert’s focus on accomplishments produced a “seismic shift” for the people who worked on performance improvement (Houmanfar et al., 2019).

Gilbert also created a behavior engineering model( BEM). BEMs have six components critical for a behavior to occur (see Table 1). Gilbert created BEMs to assist in the identification of cases of competence and incompetence. In Gilbert’s words: “For any given accomplishment, a deficiency in performance always has as its immediate cause a deficiency in a behavior repertory (P), or in the environment that supports the repertory (E), or in both. But its ultimate cause will be found in a deficiency of the management system (M). (Gilbert, 1996, p. 76)