Euchner was confused by the differences and, at the urging of another manager, hired anthropologist Patricia Sachs to figure out what had gone wrong and help fix it.

With her assistance, he discovered that there were problems with the way people perceived the system, the way management perceived the work and the way people were measured. "But with Pat's help, we were able to tweak the system to make it work differently for different people, so in the end everyone used it," he says.

Euchner estimated that it cost Nynex about US$1 million to develop and deploy MAX, which helped the company save $4 million to $6 million annually. Euchner points out that a healthy chunk of those savings would have been lost if MAX hadn't been used in all 42 maintenance centers.

Convinced that Sachs' insight as an anthropologist could have a significant and tangible impact, Euchner used her services once again in the mid-1990s. At that time, Nynex was losing market share to competitors that were able to provide high-speed data lines much more quickly than it could. Nynex officials wanted to know the reason for the lag.

Sachs led a team of Nynex workers charged with finding some answers. They learned that orders for high-speed lines took weeks to fill because they passed through multiple workers and systems. Sachs worked with Nynex employees to redesign the flow using existing technology.