DDBA 8151 Week 7 Pilot Intervention Plan Example

Four Yards Try It, Four Do Not: A Pilot Plan to Reissue Credit Authority in Writing and Review Losses Privately at a Building Supply Company, With Measures, Owners and a Rule for Stopping

Student Name

Walden University

DDBA 8151: Organizational Leadership

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Four Yards Try It, Four Do Not: A Pilot Plan to Reissue Credit Authority in Writing and Review Losses Privately at a Building Supply Company, With Measures, Owners and a Rule for Stopping

Summary

For six months starting in January, four of the company's twelve yards will run two changes together: the vice president of operations will reissue each yard manager's contractor credit authority in writing, confirming the $25,000 limit, and credit losses at those yards will be reviewed privately between the manager and the regional credit manager, using a form that separates documentation errors from judgment calls. Four matched yards will continue as now. If yard-level approval of exceptions in the pilot yards has not risen above 50 percent by the end of month three, or if bad debt on exceptions in the pilot yards runs more than one and a half times the comparison yards' rate over any three-month period, the pilot stops.

Rationale

The diagnosis holds that managers withdrew from credit decisions because their authority became unclear and because a public discussion of one manager's loss made exceptions feel personally risky. Kanter (1977) explained cautious, upward-passing behavior as a result of restricted access to information and support. The written reissue restores clear information about authority. The private review restores visible support: a manager whose exception goes bad will discuss it with one person, in a process designed to separate a missing document from a reasonable judgment that did not work out. Edmondson (1999) found that people take interpersonal risks when they believe they will not be embarrassed for honest errors; the private review is meant to rebuild that belief.

Pilot Design

Shadish et al. (2002) note that without a comparison group, any change after an intervention may be due to other events happening at the same time. Credit demand from contractors rises in spring, so a rise in local approvals in the pilot yards could reflect the season. The comparison yards share the season. Yards were paired by the regional directors before the pilot yards were chosen, and the vice president chose which yard in each pair would pilot by a coin toss, so no yard was picked because its manager seemed ready.

Table 1

Pilot and Comparison Yards

Yard 3, the yard named in April 2025, is excluded from both groups to avoid singling out its manager again.

Measures

Four measures will be tracked monthly from the credit exception log and accounts receivable records. The share of credit exceptions decided at yard level is the primary measure. Median time from request to decision shows whether contractors see a difference. Bad debt on exceptions approved, as a share of exception dollars, shows whether faster local decisions cost the company money. Contractor order retention, measured as the share of active contractor accounts placing orders each month, shows whether customers return.

Owners and Timeline

The vice president issues the written authority letters in the first week of January and attends a short call with each pilot yard manager to confirm them. The regional credit manager runs the private reviews and keeps the review forms. I compile the measures monthly and report to the vice president. The pilot runs January through June, with a decision meeting in July.

Risks

Bad debts could rise in pilot yards if managers approve more exceptions than before. The stop rule caps that risk. Comparison yard managers may hear about the letters and ask for their own, which would blur the comparison; the vice president will tell them the letters are part of a six-month review that will be extended if it works. And managers in pilot yards may approve more exceptions in the first month simply because they are being watched; the three-month threshold reduces the weight of that early effect.

Stop Rule and Decision

If either stop condition is met, the pilot ends and the company reviews whether the diagnosis was wrong. If neither is met and yard-level approvals in pilot yards reach at least 60 percent with bad debt within the threshold, the vice president will reissue authority company-wide and adopt the private review process at all twelve yards. If results fall between the two, with approvals rising but short of 60 percent, the pilot will run three more months before any decision, since a change in habits built over a year may take longer than six months to reverse.

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Kanter, R. M. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. Basic Books.

Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Houghton Mifflin.