Performance Analysis, Task Analysis, and Competency Analysis
Introduction
Topic 12 established what a "need" is (a discrepancy between "what is" and "what should be") and where it can be located (individual, group, or organisational level). This topic moves one level closer to practice: three distinct, well-established approaches for actually diagnosing a need once you suspect one exists. Each approach asks a different question and produces a different kind of output, so choosing the right one — or combining them — matters for the quality of everything that follows.
๐ฏ Learning Outcomes
- Explain Mager and Pipe's Performance Analysis model and its core "skill deficiency vs. other causes" distinction.
- Explain Task Analysis in the McGehee & Thayer tradition, including how it breaks a job into tasks and identifies required KSAs (knowledge, skills, abilities).
- Explain Competency Analysis and its roots in McClelland's critique of intelligence testing.
- Compare all three approaches on what they diagnose, how, and when each is most appropriate.
- Cross-connect this topic to Topic 12's discrepancy model and forward to Topic 17's task analysis worksheets.
๐ Why This Matters
Mager and Pipe's central warning is that when faced with a performance discrepancy, the reflexive response is usually to "train, transfer, or terminate" — but training is often the wrong remedy. Their model insists that training is appropriate only when the cause is a genuine skill or knowledge deficiency; if the real cause is a lack of motivation, unclear expectations, or missing resources, training will not fix it, no matter how well the CD programme itself is designed.
1. Performance Analysis — Mager and Pipe (1970)
Robert Mager and Peter Pipe's Analyzing Performance Problems (or, You Really Oughta Wanna) (1970) offers a step-by-step diagnostic procedure for any observed performance discrepancy. It works through a series of questions rather than assuming training is the answer:
- Is it worth fixing? — Some performance gaps are too minor or too costly to address.
- Is it a skill/knowledge deficiency? — Could the person perform the task before? Do they perform it often enough to stay proficient? If they genuinely "couldn't do it even if their lives depended on it," this is a real skill deficiency.
- If not a skill deficiency, is desired performance being punished, or is non-performance being rewarded? — Sometimes people know how to do something but are not motivated to, because of unclear expectations, absent feedback, or perverse incentives.
- What is the best remedy? — Only genuine skill/knowledge deficiencies should be addressed with formal training; other causes need "fast fixes" such as clarified expectations, job aids, feedback systems, or changed incentives.
⚠️ The Core Insight
Performance analysis exists precisely to stop organisations from defaulting to training for every performance problem. A CD programme designed for a motivational or resource problem will fail to close the gap — not because the training itself was badly designed, but because training was never the right intervention in the first place.
2. Task Analysis — McGehee and Thayer (1961)
Where performance analysis diagnoses why a gap exists, task analysis focuses on what exactly the job requires. McGehee and Thayer's (1961) Training in Business and Industry is the classic root of the widely used O-T-P (Organisational–Task–Person) model of training needs analysis, still cited today as a foundational framework. Task analysis is the "T" of that model: breaking a job down into its component tasks, then specifying the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) each task requires.
A U.S. General Accounting Office task force study applying this approach describes task/competency analysis as identifying, for each task: what is done, to whom or what, for what purpose, and using what tools or resources — producing a task statement that can then be matched against the KSAs an incumbent actually possesses. The resulting gap between required and possessed KSAs is what defines the specific training content, not a general sense that "training is needed."
What Task Analysis Produces
A list of job tasks, each specified in terms of the action performed, the object of the action, its purpose, and the tools/resources used — plus the KSAs required to perform it.
Cross-Reference — Topic 17
This is the same logic behind the Job/Task/Skill-Gap Analysis worksheets in the Halim & Ali/FAO (1997) chapter, which Topic 17 (Identification of Needs through Task Analysis) will develop in full.
3. Competency Analysis — McClelland (1973)
David McClelland's 1973 paper, "Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence," is widely credited as the founding document of the modern competency movement. McClelland argued that traditional intelligence and aptitude tests were poor predictors of actual job success, and proposed instead identifying the specific behavioural characteristics — competencies — that distinguish superior performers from average ones in a given role, through direct observation of what good performers actually do on the job (a method he called "criterion sampling").
Competency analysis therefore asks a different question again: not "is there a skill deficiency?" (Mager & Pipe) and not "what does this job require, task by task?" (McGehee & Thayer), but "what behavioural pattern separates a superior performer in this role from an average one?" The output is a competency profile — often covering a mix of knowledge, skills, and underlying personal attributes — rather than a task list or a diagnosis of a single performance problem.
4. Comparing the Three Approaches
| Performance Analysis (Mager & Pipe) | Task Analysis (McGehee & Thayer) | Competency Analysis (McClelland) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core question | Why is there a performance gap, and is training even the right remedy? | What exactly does this job/task require, in KSA terms? | What behavioural pattern distinguishes superior from average performers? |
| Unit of analysis | One performance problem | A job broken into component tasks | A role's high performers vs. average performers |
| Typical output | A diagnosis: skill deficiency vs. motivational/environmental cause, plus a recommended remedy | A validated list of task statements with associated KSAs | A competency profile for the role |
| Best used when | A specific, observable performance problem has already been noticed | Designing training content for a defined job or task, from scratch | Selecting, developing, or benchmarking people for a role more broadly |
Cross-reference: All three approaches ultimately serve Topic 12's discrepancy model — each is a different lens for finding and specifying the gap between "what is" and "what should be." None of them replaces that underlying definition; they operationalise it differently.
๐พ Extension Angle
An extension officer's underperformance in conducting farmer field demonstrations could have three very different diagnoses depending on the approach used: a performance analysis might reveal it is not a skill gap at all but a lack of transport allowance (a "won't do," not a "can't do"); a task analysis would specify exactly which sub-tasks of running a demonstration the officer struggles with; and a competency analysis might reveal that the most effective extension officers share a specific communication competency that training curricula should deliberately build.
๐ฎ๐ณ Indian Institutional Context
India's Skill India Mission and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) formally organise vocational training around National Occupational Standards (NOS) — a task-analysis-based breakdown of jobs into specific, assessable tasks and associated skills, closely mirroring the McGehee & Thayer task-analysis tradition. Separately, competency-based frameworks are increasingly used in agricultural HR — for instance, in defining the competencies expected of Krishi Vigyan Kendra Subject Matter Specialists — reflecting the McClelland-style competency-analysis approach.
๐ Beyond Agriculture
Corporate HR functions use all three approaches side by side: performance analysis (often still called "Mager and Pipe analysis" in HR training) is standard practice before commissioning any new training programme; task analysis underlies most technical/vocational training design; and competency frameworks — directly descended from McClelland's 1973 paper and later popularised by Richard Boyatzis — are now standard in corporate leadership development and recruitment.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Mager, R. F., & Pipe, P. (1970). Analyzing Performance Problems; or, You Really Oughta Wanna. Belmont, CA: Fearon Publishers.
- McGehee, W., & Thayer, P. W. (1961). Training in Business and Industry. New York: John Wiley and Sons.
- Organt, G. J. (n.d.). Task/Competency Based Training Needs Assessment. Washington, DC: U.S. General Accounting Office. [Applied example citing McGehee & Thayer, 1961, for the task/competency analysis approach.]
- McClelland, D. C. (1973). Testing for competence rather than for intelligence. American Psychologist, 28, 1–14.
- Halim, A., & Ali, M. M. (1997). Training and professional development. In B. E. Swanson, R. P. Bentz, & A. J. Sofranko (Eds.), Improving Agricultural Extension: A Reference Manual (Ch. 15). Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.