Using OBM to Improve Service Delivery (APFCON 2024) | BCBA CEU | Supervision | 1 Hour

In this talk, the speaker describes his journey from experiencing poor leadership to applying organizational behavior management (OBM) to improve systems and performance. After encountering significant dysfunction in a school—including lack of supervision during arrival, high levels of student disruption, and over 50 calls per year for classroom assistance—he implemented simple, behaviorally grounded changes in the school’s breezeway. Staff were instructed to greet students, provide behavior-specific praise, and correct running by having students walk back. With training, prompting, and feedback, the school saw a 36% reduction in classroom behavior calls.

He argues that most organizational problems can be addressed through basic behavioral principles, particularly by arranging environments that support skill acquisition, generalization, and reinforcement. Drawing on analogies from boxing, he emphasizes that people should not be “dropped into” performance settings without proper preparation and support. Instead, leaders must design systems that deliberately deliver positive reinforcement for value-added behavior.

The speaker defines leadership as linking key behaviors to valued results and describes four “hats” of leadership: leading (motivating), training (skill acquisition), coaching (supporting generalization), and managing (maintaining performance through systems). He cautions against coercion, overreliance on punishment, and toxic cultures driven by poor leadership practices. Ultimately, he encourages aligning behavior with shared values, measuring impact, and ensuring compassion is guided by science.