{"id":300720,"date":"2016-01-03T12:09:26","date_gmt":"2016-01-03T20:09:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/TheSquawkPoint\/~3\/kOn04MPFX5U\/"},"modified":"2016-01-05T12:12:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-05T20:12:19","slug":"the-simplest-way-to-improve-performance-possibly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/the-simplest-way-to-improve-performance-possibly\/","title":{"rendered":"The Simplest Way to Improve Performance \u2013 Possibly"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting story:<\/h4>\n

Courtesy of\u00a0Donella Meadows<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Near Amsterdam, there is a suburb of single-family houses all built at the\u00a0same time, all alike. Well, nearly alike. For unknown reasons it happened\u00a0that some of the houses were built with the electric meter down in the basement. In other houses, the electric meter was installed in the front hall.<\/p>\n

These were the sort of electric meters that have a glass bubble with a small\u00a0horizontal metal wheel inside. As the household uses more electricity, the\u00a0wheel turns faster and a dial adds up the accumulated kilowatt-hours.<\/p>\n

During the oil embargo and energy crisis of the early 1970s, the Dutch\u00a0began to pay close attention to their energy use. It was discovered that\u00a0some of the houses in this subdivision used one-third less electricity than\u00a0the other houses. No one could explain this. All houses were charged the\u00a0same price for electricity, all contained similar families.<\/p>\n

The difference, it turned out, was in the position of the electric meter.\u00a0The families with high electricity use were the ones with the meter in the\u00a0basement, where people rarely saw it. The ones with low use had the meter\u00a0in the front hall where people passed, the little wheel turning around,\u00a0adding up the monthly electricity bill many times a day.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The message<\/h4>\n

The story makes a neat\u00a0point. \u00a0A simple\u00a0way\u00a0to\u00a0improve performance is to give people the information they need<\/strong>. \u00a0Just do it in a straightforward, easy to read<\/a>\u00a0and readily visible<\/a> format.<\/p>\n

Then let them do the rest<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately \u201csimple and straightforward\u201d is\u00a0rarely easy.<\/p>\n

P.S. you should buy Donella Meadows book \u201cThinking in Systems: a Primer<\/a>\u201c\"\". It is fascinating.<\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this post click here<\/a> to receive the next.<\/p>\n

\"Performance<\/p>\n

Read another opinion<\/a><\/p>\n

Image by\u00a0DonJinTX<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting story: Courtesy of\u00a0Donella Meadows: Near Amsterdam, there is a suburb of single-family houses all built at the\u00a0same time, all alike. Well, nearly alike. For unknown reasons it happened\u00a0that some of the houses were built with the electric meter down in the basement. In other houses, the electric meter was installed in the front […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7660,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,92,94,332],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7660"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}