Page 239 - The Power to Change Anything

228 INFLUENCER

given normal cans with uniform chips piled one on top of the
other and were allowed to snack casually as they engaged in var-
ious activities. Experimental subjects were given cans in which
every tenth chip was an odd color. The next nine chips would
be normal and were followed by another odd-colored chip.
Again, subjects were allowed to engage in other activities while
snacking on their chips. Experimental subjects consumed 37
percent fewer chips than control subjects who were given no
indication of how many chips they’d eaten.
What was going on here? By coloring every tenth chip,
Wansink helped make the invisible visible. Nobody said any-
thing about the chips or the colors. Nobody encouraged peo-
ple to control their eating. Nevertheless, instructed by the
visual cue, suddenly eaters were conscious of the volume of
chips they were eating, and that awareness alone helped them
make a decision rather than follow an impulse.
Business leaders have long understood the importance of
making the invisible visible. For example, Emery Air Freight pio-
neered the use of containerized shipping in the 1960s. The com-
pany came up with the idea of using sturdy, reusable, and
uniform-sized containers—and the whole world changed.
Uniform containers were so much more efficient than previous
methods that international shipping prices plummeted. Along
with the unprecedented drop in price, industries that had previ-
ously been protected from global competition because of high
transportation costs (steel, automobiles, etc.) suddenly found
themselves competing with anyone, anywhere.
And yet, early on, Edward Feeney, the vice president of
systems performance at the time, was frustrated because he
couldn’t get the workforce to use the new containers to their
capacity. Containers were being sealed and shipped without
being properly filled. An audit team found they were being prop-
erly filled only 45 percent of the time. The workers were exten-
sively trained and constantly reminded of the importance of
completely filling the containers, but they were still forgetting