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For years I have been nagging the kids to “turn the lights off, you are wasting power”. “Don’t swing on the fridge door – you are letting the cold air out” “Turn the TV off”  nag nag nag. And my results – nothing short of spectacularly zero. The lights stay on, the TV plays to itself and the fridge constantly has to get re-chilled.

You see, it’s one of those human nature traits – you can tell someone that something is true, but unless they can see something happening with their own eyes they doubt.  So, I tried showing them the electricity bills. But that is a lag indicator – it is a performance measure that shows past results and so therefore has little effect on behaviour.

So yesterday I had the Climate Smart people install a real time energy monitor. It shows in real time how much electricity you are using, how much it costs and how much carbon you are putting into the atmosphere. The kids were enthralled. They wandered around the house turning stuff on and off – trying to find the appliances that used the most, through the least. They opened the fridge door to see what happened. We did the sums to work out how much each thing cost each year to run – and I then equated it to i-pods, i-tunes vouchers and other items of kids currency.

And then … they started wandering around turning things off.  Last night was the first time that the light-bulb went off – literally.

I will work on reinforcing the message, but it goes to show the power of real time performance measures to change behaviour. People see the results they are getting and move to change their behaviour.

People like to watch – how can you work with this understanding? What real time measures can you put into your workplace?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

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Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter