Designing the right intervention Shawn Callahan writes
Intervention design - an example of the power of focus. The
Theory of Constraints spends a lot of time helping people focus
on the right thing. Emery management wanted employees to put as
many packages as possible into larger containers to cut freight
costs. The company conducted a performance audit and found that,
although managers thought they were using larger containers 90
percent of the time it was feasible, only 45 percent of the
eligible packages were actually being put into larger
containers. So the company announced a new program that provided
rewards such as praise—not financial rewards—for improvement. On
the first day, the proportion of packages placed in the larger
containers increased to 95 percent in about 70 percent of the
company’s offices. The speed of this overwhelming improvement
suggests that a change in performance derived not just from the
rewards that were offered, but also from the information
provided that the current performance