Introduction
Humans are terrible at remembering things. We are easily distracted. It has been said that the human mind was built for having ideas, not holding them. It makes sense, that in the time before writing was universal, and paper and writing implements were inexpensive and readily available, that we invented mnemonic devices; techniques to improve the ability to remember something. The ancient Greeks would use these techniques to memorize epic stories and poems, which is how we ended up with the works of Homer and others, once writing was developed.
Everyone I know who is really successful has a system they use for making a list of the things they need to do, and they refer to that list often throughout their work day and week. But why? It seems like the short list of what any individual needs to do in a day should be amongst the simplest thing in the world. Why are the most successful people compelled to use checklists to make sure they don’t forget to do what they need to do? It’s not like any individual workday is near the complexity of coordinating 20-50 businesses in constructing a big building; or assembling a car or smartphone; or analyzing a complex litigated matter with 10 to 100 parties and hundreds of allegations across thousands of locations, and then writing a near-perfect report that’s hundreds of pages long. It’s just 2 or 3 or 15 things to do that day! And yet, this daily “To Do” checklist is invaluable for success.
The Use of Checklists in the Modern World
Daily To-Do Lists
Pilots
Modern Medicine, especially in surgery
Contract Scope of Work
Project Management
Job Descriptions
Building Inspectors
Construction Contractor’s “Punch-Lists”
Quality Control / Management Systems of all kinds, especially in complex manufacturing where nearly zero defects are expected.
Risk Identification & Management
Event Planning
Hiring / Human Resources in Business
Workplace / Jobsite Safety including Hazard Identification, Ladder Safety
Building Maintenance including Cleaning Checklist
Vehicle Inspection
Training
Marketing
Behavioral Assessment
Skills Assessment
Operational Procedures like assembling a piece of furniture or machinery
Checklist Manifesto and Extreme Complexity
“The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right” (2011) by Atul Gawande, who is a seriously amazing human, is a book about dealing with the "Extreme Complexity" that has become a part of so much of our working lives. The bottom line is this: Whether you are a surgeon, a pilot, a builder, a lawyer, or the manufacturer of a complex product, the world is now so complex that elimination of errors is virtually impossible without checklist discipline.
Use of Checklists by Pilots
from The Checklist Manifesto.
In October 1935, US Army Air Corps brass gathered at an airfield in Dayton, Ohio. They’d come to see two aircraft builders pit their planes against each other in a series of trials, with the best-performed aircraft getting its builder a lucrative contract for new long-range bombers. In theory, the two rivals, Boeing Corporation and Martin & Douglas, had an equal chance of winning the contract. But in reality, the result seemed a foregone conclusion.
The smaller Martin & Douglas plane just couldn’t compete with Boeing’s bigger, more powerful Model 299. This imposing aircraft boasted a 103-foot wingspan, four engines (the norm was two), five times the specified number of bombs, and twice the range of its predecessors. Rumour had it that the army had pretty much already decided to order 65 of what one newspaperman had dubbed ‘the flying fortress’.
The Model 299, carrying five crew members, made for an impressive sight as it taxied onto the runway and then roared off to rise gracefully into the sky. But as the army chiefs and manufacturing executives looked on, the plane stalled at 300 feet, tipped sharply and crashed to the ground. Two of the crew were killed, including the pilot, Major Ployer P. Hill.
An investigation found that Major Hill had been preoccupied with the many procedures required to fly the complex new plane, from monitoring the variable oil–fuel mix in each engine to adjusting the pitch of the constant-speed propellers. Because of this, he’d forgotten to release the rudder and elevator controls. But while the tragedy was blamed on ‘pilot error’, the implication was that the Model 299 was too complicated to be safe – as one reporter put it, it was ‘too much airplane for one man to fly’. The army contract was awarded to Martin & Douglas; Boeing’s business was ruined almost to the point of bankruptcy.
But some in the Army Air Corps still thought the Model 299 was the better aircraft. So a group of test pilots got together to work out how further accidents could be avoided. They ruled out more training – Major Hill had been in charge of flight testing and couldn’t have been more experienced. Instead, they came up with a stunningly simple idea. Previously, flying a plane had been fairly easy for a pilot to manage. But aeronautical advances now meant there were too many things going on in the cockpit for one person to handle. What was needed, the test pilots decided, was a checklist.
The pilots kept their checklist straightforward but comprehensive, including even the most obvious actions – release the brakes, close all doors and windows, unlock the elevator controls, and so on. Everything a pilot needed to remember was there, on a single index card. And it did the trick. Using their checklist, the pilots flew the Model 299 for a total of 1.8 million miles without incident. The Army Air Corps subsequently ordered thousands of the flying fortresses, renaming them B-17s and using them to devastating effect during World War 2.
Brown M&Ms
I grew up in the late 1970s and early 80s. In the days before the internet there were “urban legends” that are now WAY to easy to debunk using Snopes.com or some similar site. So of course, there were urban legends about the rock band Van Halen, because they were as big as bands get. The rumor was that they were such fussy prima donnas that their contract called for silly things like having M&Ms candy in a bowl with all the brown one’s removed. Crazy, right!? And the legend went that if the band showed up and there were brown M&Ms in the bowl, they would tear the place apart in a rage! Now who would bother to make someone remove the brown M&Ms!? And who would care about a detail so small as forgetting to remove the brown M&Ms? So, at that time, we all assumed it was just one of the many exaggerated urban legends that was not true. But it wasn’t an exaggeration! It was all true!!
We got our hands on 11 pages (of more than 40) of the infamous 1982 Van Halen contract and "rider," or instructions that dictated all the brown M&Ms be removed. The instructions (or rider) portion that we have is 7 pages, pages 35 to 41, of 41 total pages. Page one of the contract portion states clearly: "All provisions are spelled out in great detail in order to prevent any misunderstandings and to present to your customers the finest in contemporary entertainment," as well as "All provisions must be adhered to strictly." Of the 7 pages of rider we have, there are more than 200 distinct instructions. If the previous pages were similarly dense, then there were between 1,000-1,500 distinct instructions. The infamous M&M's instruction says "(WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES)." This in instruction is the 41st instruction on page 40 of the rider. Page 40 contains a total of 62 unique instructions.
From interviews with the band many years later, this is one of the quality control functions that would, if not followed, warn band members and management that the promoter did not run a organizationally mature business, capable of following the really important instructions in putting the stage, electrical, and lighting together in a way that was safe for the band and the audience. They were touring with many giant trucks full of staging and other equipment that if not handled with care and professionalism could easily cause injury and death. So they needed a simple way to judge the quality of the organization. If they saw brown M&Ms, they knew they needed to quality check 100% of the safety related tenants of the checklist. And they claim that there was a close relationship to the quality of the work by promoters who had organizations who could follow the checklist close enough to make sure the brown M&Ms were removed, to those that also quality checked every aspect of the safety requirements in that same document.
Sensible Lists
I have an entire post and an absurd number of trainings related to making sensible lists. Let me just say that making a sensible checklist that generally conforms with the rules of a work breakdown structure makes Checklist Management Discipline MUCH easier. The point is that all of the to-do items should be in a sensible order, in sensible categories. And if you tell me that “sensible” is way too subjective, then you may have already been fired ;-) It’s not that subjective. And since we now test every employee on the way in to verify they can make a sensible list (people who can make them are REALLY surprised at what a large percentage of the population cannot do so), you’re going to be fine.
But just to refresh your memory, copy Section 2 of this training (The Use of Checklists in the Modern World) into a project note on your Training Project. Now make this a "sensible" list.
Quality Management
Anyone who started driving in the 1980s or earlier remembers that cars used to break down; a lot. Or they would not start when you went out in the morning. It was just a fact of life. Getting stuck on the side of the freeway, and using a call box to summon help, was just not that big a deal because it was common. But now, I can’t remember the last time my car would not start or that I was stranded. I can’t even remember the last time I had a flat tire! And the difference is the application of quality management principles. The names of this collection of quality tools has evolved over time, and are now generally referred to as Lean Six Sigma.
FANCY NAMES AND TOOLS ASIDE, ALL QUALITY CONTROL SYSTEMS ARE QUITE SIMILAR:
Figure out the best way to do something.
Make a simple checklist of that process.
Teach everyone who works the process how to do what needs to be done.
Continuously verify conformance with the process by looking at the checklist. The best companies take that event further:
Continuously measure and report on the process.
Try to improve the process.
If improvement attempts succeed, then make a new checklist.
Teach everyone who works in the process how to do what needs to be done.
Continuously verify conformance with the process by looking at the checklist.
Repeat steps 5 to 9 forever.
“Lean” is a tool kit for removing waste from processes (doing only the right things). “Six Sigma” is a set techniques intended to decrease variability from the standard (doing the right things right) and reduce the probability of error or defect down to a maximum of 3.4 defects per million opportunities. It is used by virtually all manufacturers of our favorite products (Apple, Samsung, every airplane and auto manufacturer, etc.).
Now think about even the simplest construction project. There are, at minimum, hundreds of moving parts. And much of the litigation we see is because of the mismanagement of this "Extreme Complexity." We, as testifying experts, need to be masters of what the people we represent have failed at. We need to be able to manage checklists containing hundreds of items, make sensible lists out of those hundreds, thousands, and sometimes hundreds-of-thousands of pieces of data (including documents), and then explain it all to my (Pete's) mom.
We know from science and experience that "Human behavior is a function of it's consequences." We can talk and write until we are blue in the face about what to do and how to do it. But we know that if we don't "inspect what we expect," then we won't get what we expect. It's just a fact of life. And the best way to train people is to let them try doing a task, and then giving immediate feedback. So that is what we do. We all need to help each other to master these skills, and go offer constructive feedback immediately when we see work that does not conform with our super high standards.
A Strange Phenomenon
People will mindlessly check a box, even if the action was not taken, or the prompt to think about something was not thought about. It’s deeply fascinating (maddening, really). I don’t know what to say other than, for some people, we have to “inspect what we expect” until they have proven to have the discipline to REALLY use the checklist every time.
Using Checklists in Our Work
In our work, we often use these operational checklists:
Awesome Customer Experience - Claims & Litigation: All Projects
Awesome Customer Experience - All Projects: First 10 Things (Basic Analysis)
Building Performance Analysis Process
Audits
Inspections
Reports
Many more…
In general, our checklists and audits are a prompt to THINK. Virtually nothing in our work is just rote clicking or mindless data entry. Every click or sentence we write requires thought. So our checklists are used to make sure we think about all of the things that will give us the closest thing to a guarantee of success.
