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Suppose we told you that I know of a tactic that will improve communications, teamwork and operating performance in your organization. And suppose we told you that this tactic will cost next to nothing to implement (other than your time and discipline). I imagine that such a message would pique your interest.
When we tell you that this wonderfully effective tactic is the everyday checklist, it’s not difficult to imagine that your interest waned. People dislike checklists because they feel that they don’t need to be reminded how to do their jobs. They feel like checklists are just chores that don’t add much value.
Recently, during a conversation about how we might develop something of a training checklist, an hourly employee handed Rick a book, “The Checklist Manifesto”, written by a surgeon, Atul Gawande. This employee has been recommending the book to his managers and fellow workers. The book extols the virtues of simple checklists in the operating room and the impact they have in reducing surgery complications. The author also provides a number of illustrations of the use of checklists in aviation and relates how they’ve saved countless lives as pilots and crews caught errors with their use.
In all of his examples, checklists provided an insurance policy that everyone does everything the same way, looks for the same things and reports the relevant information in a standardized format.
Checklists aid in the provision of standard practice that ensures process control in the operating room, in the cockpit and on the factory floor. Diligent application of checklists leads to improved safety, productivity and product quality.
The most interesting passages in the book, though, told of how checklists can improve communication, teamwork, and morale. It’s all in how the checklist is used.
In his own work, Rick provides clients with a Workplace Self-Review Checklist. Operating teams are encouraged to use it to audit their own areas with respect to workplace organization and safety. It’s a simple form on which the operating team scores a number of elements of workplace organization and writes notes on those factors that score low.
The Workplace Self-Review Checklist, in and of itself, has little value. The real value of the checklist is in the discussion that it can generate within the team.
“I scored this element a two (low) but you rated it a five (high)...what did you see that I missed?”
“We all scored this other element a one (very low) ... Let’s talk about what we can do to bring that score up.”
“We’ve been scoring this other factor a two for the past several weeks … this week we scored it a four. It looks like our improvement plan worked.”
At one client, warehouse workers using the Workplace Self-Review Checklist started to focus on an issue that they all brought up in their discussions: leaning stacks of packaged products. When the packaged product wasn’t stacked correctly, the boxes began to lean, creating a safety hazard and a hindrance to productivity. Those conversations eventually led to redesign of the boxes themselves.
Ron has made effective use of maintenance checklists that were used to ensure that all work performed on operating equipment was done to a standard procedure, ultimately leading to better product quality.
The book highlights this same dynamic; the checklists themselves aren’t very useful unless they are completed and discussed by a team. It is in the conversation that improvements are seen in communication and teamwork.
I imagine that at least a few of you reading this might be thinking, “Rick, we already have checklists out of our ears!” It’s true that having too many checklists can be as troublesome as having too few. Your first step in using checklists effectively might be to collect all the examples of those you presently use and assess their value. Get rid of those that don’t provide value or that no one pays attention to any longer.
Remember, checklists are effective and useful only when they are discussed by the team. If that’s not how your existing checklists are being used, start using them that way. Or get rid of them.
Ron Jacques is a 35-year veteran within the lean, manufacturing and consulting arenas. He is a Certified Lean Practitioner who has delivered hundreds of kaizen and transformational solutions to clients and companies within the Pharma, Medical Device, Automotive, Food/Beverage, Electronics, Military Defense, Personal Care, Consumer Durables and Capital Equipment industries.
Rick Bohan, principal, Chagrin River Consulting LLC, has more than 25 years of experience in designing and implementing performance improvement initiatives in a variety of industrial and service sectors. He is also co-author of People Make the Difference: Prescriptions and Profiles for High Performance.
