Page 240 - The Power to Change Anything

Change the Environment 229

to do it more than half of the time. After exhausting these at-
tempts to motivate the workforce, Feeney stumbled on a method
that made the invisible visible. He drew conscious attention to
the objective by having a “fill to here” line drawn on the inside
of every container. Immediately, the rate of completely filled con-
tainers went from 45 percent to 95 percent. The problem went
away the moment Feeney made the invisible visible.
Hospitals have been making similar improvements by
restructuring their physical world. Savvy administrators help
people understand the financial implications of their nearly
unconscious choices by making invisible costs much more vis-
ible. In one hospital, leaders encouraged clinicians to pay
attention to even small products that eventually cost a great deal
of money. For example, a type of powderless latex gloves cost
over 10 times more than a pair of regular, less-comfortable dis-
posable gloves. And yet, in spite of regular pleas from senior
management to reduce costs, almost everyone in the facility
continued to use the pricey gloves for even short tasks. The
powderless latex was more comfortable than the cheaper
gloves, and besides, what were a few pennies here and there?
Then one day someone placed a 25¢ sign on the box of
inexpensive gloves and a $3.00 sign on the box of pricier latex
gloves. Problem solved. Now that the information was obvious
at the moment people were making choices, the use of the
expensive gloves dropped dramatically.
And speaking of hands in a hospital, we referred earlier to
the appalling state of hand hygiene in U.S. hospitals. Re-
member Dr. Leon Bender and how he used Starbucks gift
cards as an incentive to encourage doctors to use hand antisep-
tic? This influence method alone increased compliance from
65 to 80 percent. But this wasn’t enough for the tenacious Dr.
Bender. He wanted more. But what could he do next? After try-
ing several other methods to motivate people to wash more
thoroughly, he figured the hospital efforts had topped out until
he too realized that he needed to make the invisible visible.