The Voltage Effect

“Look, my book is kind of a common-sense checklist” - John List

The 5 Vital Signs: 5 Things To Think About When You’re Scaling An Intervention

Imagine you’ve piloted an intervention. Maybe it was designed to encourage more kids to attend school, to remind patients to take their medication or to nudge office workers to recycle more. Whatever it is, chances are you want to scale that intervention.

You want to take the idea that you’ve tested with a few hundred people and give it to a few thousand or even million people.

But here’s the problem. When interventions scale, often don’t work as well.

In this post we’re going to look at 5 ideas from John Lists book the Voltage Effect.

If your intervention has these 5 vital signs it has a chance to scale

1. Be Wary Of False Positives

2. Know Your Audience

3. Chef Or Ingredients: What Are The Crucial Parts Of The Intervention?

4. Scaling Can Cause Unintended Consequences

5. Scaling Can Be Too Costly

Summary