"Make it easy to do the right thing..."

I was working in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) last week, when I came across what I thought was a very interesting photograph

I should provide a little bit of context here, before I go further.  First, you have to understand that one of the most common (and most effective) ways that the nursing leadership of our PICU communicates general updates, announcements, and policy changes to the rest of the team is by posting information on the walls of the staff bathrooms on the unit.  As a matter of fact, most of our nursing inpatient units communicate in this manner - it is actually quite effective, believe it or not.  Second, we have had problems with toilets throughout the hospital clogging up with sanitary wipes.  As it turns out, the company that makes these commercially available sanitary wipes claim that the wipes can be flushed safely down the toilet ("safe for flushing" and "safe for septic tank").  Unfortunately, when you are dealing with a large hospital with toilets in every patient room, the number of sanitary wipes that get flushed down the toilet places a lot of stress on the sewage pipes.  Our facilities department decided to try to mitigate the problem by posting these signs above every toilet in all of the staff bathrooms. 


So back to my original story.  I was working in the PICU last week, when I came across the sign above posted in one of our staff bathrooms.  Incidentally, the toilet of this particular bathroom happened to be clogged.  We called facilities, and surprisingly enough, the toilet was clogged with sanitary wipes!  Was this a case of blatant disregard for a clear sign asking staff not to flush sanitary wipes down the toilet?  Not really.  What I ALSO found in the bathroom that day, on top of the toilet and within easy reach of anyone using it, was a package of sanitary wipes!  I went on a little expedition and walked through all of the staff bathrooms in the PICU and found the same issue - clearly legible signs stating, "Ignore the hype: Don't flush a wipe!" and right underneath them, a package of sanitary wipes!


Would you be surprised that the signs had clearly failed to encourage staff not to flush sanitary wipes down the toilet?  Not at all - a better strategy may have been to remove the sanitary wipes from the bathrooms AND only then, post the sign.  In other words, we failed here because we did not make it easy to do the right thing.


How many examples can you find where a change initiative has failed because the leadership failed to make it easy to do the right thing?  I bet you could come up with several in your own personal experience.  I came across a story that said that landscape designers often wait before placing sidewalks in a public venue in order to see how people will actually walk around:

Pretty clever, huh? Bottom line, if you want any change initiative to succeed, you absolutely, positively have to make it easy for people to do the right thing.