Key Considerations when Incorporating Human Performance Technology

Opinions on the value and impact of human performance technology vary across the Tactical Athlete Leadership Board, ranging from those who are always curious about the latest advancements and innovations, to those who are loyal to the proven products that they’ve incorporated into their workflow, to those who are confident that with a sandbag and a stopwatch, they can accomplish almost anything they need to measure.

Regardless of where any individual member stands on the technological adoption spectrum, a component that they can all agree on is that incorporating innovation into their human performance platform doesn’t start with selecting the new piece of tech. In fact, that’s often the last step in a lengthy process.

Just like the scientific method, the process should start with identifying the question: “what problem are we trying to solve?” or “what are we trying to measure?”. Whether it is looking to quantify focus and cognitive performance, measure exertion during an activity or making sure that warfighters sleep and recover properly, being able to clearly identify an overall goal helps inform what technology is selected.

Once that goal has been established, the cultural and logistical factors that can arise also need to be considered. Informing and educating warfighters on how to use a particular technology, why it is being used and how the information being collected will be used for decision-making will go a long way in ensuring that participation, compliance and proper usage. It’s important to note that this step is not only crucial at the beginning of a technological adoption, but throughout the process, to continue to reinforce the importance of the solution. This communication needs to be incorporated into broader continuous communication efforts around the importance of holistic human performance practices or else the risk becomes that the selected technology will end up either under-used or unused and any possible insights gathered will have minimal impact.

Additionally, the analysis and the intervention sides of incorporating human performance technology also needs to be weighed. What is an ideal turn-around time between the collection of a datapoint that requires action and that action being taken? Can that timeframe be realized to be impactful for the overall goal that was established? This consideration is to hedge against collecting data for the sake of collecting data and to try to ensure that the incorporation of technology actually moves the needle on overall human performance. There is little value gained if “red flags” or actionable data points remain sitting in databases or spreadsheets, and are not uncovered until days or weeks after the fact, eliminating the opportunity for intervention.

Similarly, reporting on the data more broadly needs to be understood and considered. How will the data be shared back with the warfighters, with other practitioners and with commanders? How often will that communication take place and in what format? Providing visibility to all these stakeholders goes a long way towards building the trust and buy-in required to gather data in order to make better decisions on trends and outlying pieces of information.  

All of these considerations are technology agnostic but they do present some level of human cost, such as additional time for analysis and communication to ensure that any new human performance technology is successful. Answering these questions will also help inform overall technology selection, in terms of finding solutions that may incorporate functionality to assist with onboarding of personnel, notifications or reporting and access to data.