It has been a while since I had time to write a blog post, but I found this excerpt in a 2009 article about the evolution of the Nike + running shoe product.

The article describes a well-known behavior in sociology called the Hawthorne effect, and it is an extremely compelling tidbit about human nature that applies directly to 94Fifty and how we bring value to coaches and players.   Little did we know that basketball and manufacturing had so much in common…

“In the mid-1920s at Western Electric’s manufacturing plant in Cicero, Illinois, the management began an experiment. The lighting in an area occupied by one set of workers was increased so there was better illumination to help them see the telephone relays they were building. Perhaps not surprisingly, workers who had more light were able to assemble relays faster.

Other changes were then made: Employees were given rest breaks. Their productivity increased. They were allowed to work shorter hours. Again, they were more efficient during those hours.

But then something weird happened. The lighting was cut back to normal … and productivity still went up. In fact, just about every change the company made had only one effect: increased worker productivity. After months of tinkering, the work conditions were returned to the original state, and workers built more relays than they did in the exact same circumstances at the start of the experiment.

What was happening? Why was it that no matter what the Hawthorne plant managers did, the workers just performed better? Researchers puzzled over the results, and some still doubt the details of the experiment’s protocols. But the study gave rise to what’s known in sociology as the Hawthorne effect.

The gist of the idea is that people change their behavior—often for the better—when they are being observed (which is why it’s sometimes called the observer effect). Those workers at Western Electric didn’t build more relays because there was more or less light or because they had more or fewer breaks. The Hawthorne effect posits that they built more relays simply because they knew someone was keeping track of how many relays they built.”

Bolds and Underlines added for effect.    What we see everyday with 94Fifty is that what gets measured, gets improved.   It turns out that this is really not a novel concept when it comes to human behavior.

Keep practicing!