One of the things we work on with our clients and business owners is developing systems for their business.  It’s critical to build a systematic approach, figuring out the best way to do something and making sure it’s done that same way consistently…regardless of who’s doing the work.  Often the easiest way to rollout that kind of systematic thinking is to develop a checklist.

I just finished reading The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. It’s a great read and a lot more entertaining that I thought it would be.  Gawande is a medical doctor who decided to investigate the effectiveness of Checklists and how if they could be applied to the medical profession.

My experience with doctors is that they traditionally aren’t great writers or story tellers (although to be fair, I would much rather they be great doctors first…).  Having said that, Dr. Gawande writes in a way that makes it very easy to read, telling several stories to help illustrate his points.

He begins by clarifying the difference between errors of ignorance (when we don’t know enough) and errors of ineptitude (when we don’t use what we know properly) Then he leads you through the findings of his research he accumulated while writing the book.

He started with the aviation industry and Boeing…where they have championed the idea of effective checklists for over 75 years.  It’s not by accident the chance of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 25 Million. If there is the potential for something to happen in the air, chances are pretty good there is a checklist nearby the pilots will be able to refer to.

What his book points out is that it isn’t that people don’t know what to do. It is that it’s almost impossible to be prepared on your own…to know what to do under any circumstance without a framework to refer to. He isn’t discounting anyone’s knowledge; it is having a guideline that keeps you from missing the obvious.

If you are a fan of Van Halen, you will learn the real reason that David Lee Roth requested all the brown M & M’s be removed from their candy dishes back stage. It had nothing to do with his ego. Another great story is Walmart’s ability to respond after Katrina flooded New Orleans.  Both stories driven by the power of using checklists in creative ways.

Building a checklist doesn’t have to be overly complex – here are the 3 high level steps:

Development => Drafting => Validation

A couple of the take-a-ways on building a checklist is to keep it simple and talk in the language of the people who will be reading it. He even provides a Checklist for Checklists to help guide you through the process.  Obviously he’s a pretty methodical thinker…but he’s also an interesting guy – check out this interview he did with Stephen Colbert to get a better feel for why he’s so interested in this topic (and why it makes sense for you as well).

Could you implement some checklists?

The challenge with implementing Checklist with professionals in any industry is that you risk insulting their intelligence because they feel they already know all “the stuff”. Why do they need a list? I guess, that may be a question to ask the 155 people of Flight 1549 who landed safely on the Hudson River on Jan. 14^th, 2009.

As you start the New Year are there areas in your business where using a simple Checklist could reduce the chance for errors?  If you need some help, don’t be afraid to ask. If you already use Checklists in your business, I would love to hear some success stories – share them below.

Happy New Year!

Chris Steinlage, Kansas City Business Coach.

Photo by The U.S. Army

  photo by 9-lives

Imagine a large elephant and a relatively small rider, making their way through the jungle.  Now imagine the elephant sees something they’re interested in and heads that direction…at that point, the rider is literally carried away, even if that’s not where they wanted to go!

That’s a key premise in Switch (How to change when change is hard) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  As the title suggests, this is a book about effecting change…within yourself, your family or your business and it’s full of great stories and a lot of practical ideas.

What’s the deal with the elephant and the rider?  They’re part of an analogy originally developed by Jonathan Haidt – author of The Happiness Hypothesis.  The elephant represents your emotional side and the rider is the analytical / rational part of you.  Think about it this way – it’s mid afternoon, you’re kind of hungry and you know there’s a leftover doughnut laying on a plate in the other room.  Rationally you know you don’t need to doughnut, they’re fried rings of death!  However you also know they taste great and emotionally that doughnut would make you feel really good.  For most people, the elephant is going to win that battle fairly quickly and you are going to eat that doughnut!

That’s what really cool about Switch – they give you a practical framework to not only understand why we act the way we do, but also tools that can help you do something about it.

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photo by Ernst Vikne

Sometimes the hardest part of this whole business thing is getting them to move!  Have you ever had the situation where you’ve had good meetings with potential prospective clients…and then you wait?

They know who you are.  They know what you do.  They need what you do, but for some reason they don’t move and you end up waiting for something to happen!

I’ve got a couple of clients facing this very situation – they’ve put a lot of time and effort into marketing, they’re getting initial meetings with what looks to be the right kind of people (qualified and in need) but things are moving slowly…or really not moving at all!

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Almost everyone goes through some sort of planning and goal setting exercise during the year.  We’re now 2/3 of the way through this year and although it’s a little early to get serious about finalizing next year’s goals, it’s not too early to start thinking about it.

With that in mind, I challenged one of my Peer Group Advisory Boards with a few questions to make them think a bit.  The general idea is you sometimes need to shake your thinking up in order to get clear.  It’s rough to just jump into ‘What’s your goal for next year’ – and if those goals don’t line up with an accurate picture of your values and what you really want, you’re going to be wasting your time. 

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  photo by euart

Sometimes you need to mix in a little philosophy with your business…

I’m re-reading the classic business book – The EMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber (prepping for a workshop I’m doing next week) and I was inspired by some philosophy in a chapter that I hadn’t thought about in a while.

For those that haven’t read the book (it’s one of the Top 100 Business Books of all time), it’s a story about a struggling entrepreneur who owns a pie shop and how the author helps her realize why her business is struggling (along with most small business owners at some point and time) and the shift in perception that’s needed to avoid the all too common downward spiral of business failure.

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