How a lever is worked out

What a lever is

A lever is one thing to do at one store. It names the store, the problem, the number behind it, and what to check or change.

Each lever carries an evidence line: the figure now, and what it is being compared with.

Dollar figures

A figure appears only when it can be calculated. It is the gap between this period and the store's own normal rate, applied to this period's sales.

• The figure is never guessed or written by the model.
• Some levers have no figure, because the cost cannot be worked out from the data. That is deliberate.
• Staffing levers are not priced. Short staffing costs sales that no report records.

When a lever comes back

A lever is sent once. It returns if it gets noticeably worse, or is still true after a couple of weeks. A second problem at the same store waits for the next day.