BCBAs often have a great resource we can use to substantially Poogi, but we often don’t use it properly. Sometimes we have a staff person who can do amazing things. They might work remarkably well with one child in particular, or their methods could work with a whole wide variety of children. In my experience, when there is a resource like this, it usually gets wasted. Instead of learning from this resource and putting the whole program on a POOGI, we tend to use them to solve emergencies. Put her with Johnny, we have no one else who can handle him today. OR, I don’t have to worry about Alice. She’s got everything under control, we have bigger problems to handle right now.
In a classic book that every BCBA should read, Tom Gilbert discussed what he called the exemplary performer and how to use that person to improve whole systems. The exemplary performer is a person who really outshines his or her peers and is able to accomplish substantially more in less time at least as it applies to a particular result. His examples are from other fields, but the same principles apply.
The first rule he suggests is not to spend too much time asking the exemplary performer why they can accomplish so much more than other staff. Usually, they aren’t very good at explaining why they achieve superior results. Gilbert says you have to actually watch the exemplary performer in action, and then compare it to the typical performer to understand what makes their performance so special.
This knowledge is gold for the POOGI. Once you have the knowledge of what makes the exemplary performer superior, you can use it to train the other performers, and it can often dramatically improve the whole system. In addition, when working with specific children, this knowledge is often a great source of important new goals that can make a difference in the child’s life.
If you have one star that really shines, don’t waste that resource handling every emergency that comes up. Improve the whole system by figuring out why they are such a star.