Hand Washing and Evidence-based Management
This is a terrific post by Bob Sutton on making change initiatives stick. His reference is a NY Times article, "Selling Soap", by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt that looked at the issue of hand washing by medical care workers. Here's the story:
The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center tried different techniques to get docs to wash their hands. They tried giving Starbucks vouchers whenever they spotted docs washing their hands. But that only got compliance to 80%. Next, they targeted some influential docs and got their hands photographed over a cultured plate. These "disgusting but striking pictures" revealed the colonies of bacteria on their palms. Finally, they took one of these pictures and made it into a screensaver, which was then installed on every computer. This got the compliance up to 100%
Sutton sums it up nicely:
they created the kind of social pressure where if people did not follow the norm, it would lead to loss of face. Economists and psychologists like financial rewards, and as this tale shows, incentives are effective to a point. But if you can find ways that people feel compelled to follow the evidence, or they will suffer humilation in the eyes of the people around them, that is even more effective. It is a lot easier to measure and dispense financial rewards, but if you want to change human behavior, it is hard to beat pride and shame
[thanks Anecdote]
Permalink | Wednesday, September 27, 2006
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