Unit 5: Evaluation and Measuring Change

This is it! We’re finally ready to actually try changing the behavior. A good pilot guides us through 3 gates:

1. Were we able to change the underlying pressure that will drive this result?
2. Assuming that we were able to change the pressure, did it change the behavior?
3. Did it change the behavior enough to be worth scaling?

The first two are objective: we should have process metrics that tell us whether the pressure changed and outcome metrics that tell us whether the behavior changed. But the last one is fairly subjective: what does “enough” really mean?

This is why our job is generally to provide the evidence, not make the decision. “Enough” is subject to the current needs of the cost (operational) and benefit (business) stakeholders. Maybe they only want cheap and cheerful interventions that are easy to implement, even if they only change behavior a little. Maybe they only want swing-for-the-fences interventions that are big and expensive and worth investing in. That’s up to them; our job is to make sure they have the evidence to make those decisions.