Success Factor Modeling

Posting by Soleh Sugianto

Success Factor Modeling™ was developed by Robert and John Dilts as a method to identify and transfer the critical success factors necessary to promote the growth and development of new ventures, traditional companies and entrepreneurs, and to help them be maximally prepared to create, recognize and take advantage of opportunities when they arise. 

With nearly thirty years of combined experience in advising both multi-national corporations and emerging growth technology companies, Robert and John applied their extensive expertise in defining the necessary strategies, and in providing substantive strategic advice for success in the increasingly competitive global marketplace. 

Success Factor Modeling™ brings together these combined skills and backgrounds to create a set of principles and distinctions which are uniquely suited to analyze and identify crucial patterns of business practices and behavioral skills used by successful individuals, teams and companies. The SFM™ process can be used to identify the critical success factors employed by successful companies, teams and individuals so that others may learn these strategies in order to facilitate the same level of success. 

With Success Factor Modeling™, it is possible to define specific models, tools and skills that will allow individuals, teams and companies to greatly increase their chances of success, and which stimulate and support innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.

One of the strengths of the SFM™ process is its integration of effective business practices with important behavioral skills. Benoit Sarazin, former Marketing Manager for the Communications Solutions Services Division at Agilent Technologies, points out, “Many methodologies exist to help people with effective business practices. If you go to a library or bookstore, you can find all types of resources for making business plans, forming marketing strategies, protecting intellectual property, etc. But there are no methodologies for the behavioral skills. This is what makes Success Factor Modeling totally unique.”

By examining successful projects and initiatives and observing the behavior of high performing individuals and teams, SFM™ helps individuals and organizations to quantify the factors that have created their company’s legacy of success and to identify the trends necessary to extend that legacy into the future. These factors can then be “baked into” people’s daily activities by identifying and extending what they are already doing that is successful.

The basic steps of the process SFM™ are:

1. Conducting a needs analysis to determine the specific issues, contexts and skills to be addressed. The first step involves identifying “success stories” to determine their desired state of success and selecting the individuals and teams and individuals to be modeled.

2. Setting up and carrying out modeling interviews and procedures in order to identify the capabilities or performance to be examined and gather the necessary information. 

3. Determining relevant patterns in the behavior, strategies and beliefs of the individuals and teams who have been modeled, which sets the benchmark for successful leadership in the company’s future.

4. Organizing the patterns that have been discovered into a descriptive and prescriptive structure; i.e., a “model.” This involves constructing a customized model and defining the supporting skills and competencies. 

5. Designing effective installation/intervention procedures and tools in order to transfer or apply the key elements of the model to others. This involves completing the instructional design and development of the assessment tools and competency development paths for different individuals and teams.

Success Factor Modeling™ takes into account multiple levels of factors related to success, including environmental, behavioral, cognitive, values, beliefs, identity and spiritual. It is founded on observing and mapping the key mental and physical processes which underlie an exceptional performance of some type. 

The goal of the Success Factor Modeling™ method is to identify the essential elements of thought and action required by an individual or group to produce the desired response or outcome. It is the process of taking a complex performance or interaction and breaking it into small enough chunks so that it can be recapitulated in some way. The purpose of behavior modeling is to create a pragmatic map or “model” of that behavior which can be used to reproduce or simulate some aspect of that performance by anyone who is motivated to do so. Thus, it involves benchmarking behaviors and ideas, as well as business practices.

The objective of the Success Factor Modeling™ process is not to end up with the one “right” or “true” description of a particular person’s or team’s performance, but rather to make an instrumental map that allows us to apply the factors that we have modeled in some useful way. 

In summary, SFM™ may be applied in order to:

• Identify key factors associated with successful performance.

• Organize those factors into a comprehensive and comprehensible model.

• Define specific tools and skills which transfer the key success factors encompassed by the model to others.

• Support the implementation of critical success factors through a variety of development paths that serve to create a dynamic and sustainable leadership culture.

By Hendry