What Makes a Checklist Effective?

At Manifestly, we’re dedicated to helping people use checklists to improve their recurring processes. In this article, we’re going to dive into the question of what makes a checklist effective by focusing on these questions:

• What is a checklist?
• What kinds of processes lend themselves best to the use of a checklist?
• What makes a checklist effective?

What is a checklist?

We’ve written about this before, noting the difference between checklists and TODO lists. The key difference is that the purpose of a checklist is to highlight key decision points or risks that require communication and collaboration among the team members using the checklist. A checklist tool–such as Manifestly–enables such communication and collaboration in real-time, and serves as a record of the decisions and communication that took place.

Pro Tip: If your checklist enumerates every single step of the underlying process, you’re probably doing it wrong. Imagine you have a store opening checklist for a restaurant. And one of the steps is, “Take the chairs off the tables and put them on the floor.” It won’t take long before the people using such a checklist every day completely checkout from using the checklist.

What kinds of processes lend themselves best to the use of a checklist?

A checklist is all about highlighting key decision points, key checkpoints, key risks, and facilitating communication and collaboration among the team addressing these items. If you have a recurring process that involves no decisions, no risks, and requires no communication–then it’s probably not a great candidate for the use of a checklist.

You may have many recurring processes in your organization. Which of these are best suited for a checklist?

• How frequently do the people using the checklist perform the process?
• How much collaboration is involved in the process?
• How complex is the process? Are there important decision points? Are there real risks that need to be evaluated?

What makes a checklist effective?

It flows pretty naturally from what we’ve already covered, that an effective checklist is one that facilitates good decisions. Good decisions naturally flow from good conversation. And what enables conversation better than good questions?

Pro Tip: If your checklist is full of questions, you’re probably doing it right. Imagine a store opening checklist that ends with, “Would you invite your friends to join you to eat at this restaurant?”

Summary

An effective checklist is first a checklist, not something else. Checklists are best used with recurring processes that involve a team collaboratively making decisions in the midst of complexity and risk. Good checklists tend to ask questions, which is the easiest way to get the collaborative juices flowing.