A new book, The Checklist Manifesto, is prompting professionals of all stripes to consider the power and benefit of using simple checklists to improve both the delivery of their service and their bottom line.
Based on the work of Johns Hopkins physician Peter Pronovost, the book details the stunning – and I do mean stunning – results of the use of checklists to reduce infection and surgical error (which in turn, of course, bring a cascade of positive financial and operational benefits).
If you want a taste of the book, you can download a copy of the 2007 New Yorker magazine article from which the full-length book grew.
For now, the salient point is that most of what you and your staff do all day – whether it’s producing work for clients or marketing your practice or managing finances – represents a set of patterns, or routines.
Often though, those routines are neither optimized nor systematically communicated, and as a result, you’re likely tolerating a 10 to 30 percent rate of inefficiency and/or error. And that means rework, frustration, embarrassment or worse. In fact, the use of checklists could be considered a basic component of any course on time management for attorneys.
The book describes the resistance doctors and nurses initially felt to using checklists (not enough time, burdensome, etc) — and how they turned around big time once they saw the benefits in improved efficiency and effectiveness.
So, check out the New Yorker article and consider how the consistency of what you and your staff do on a regular basis could be elevated by capturing into a checklist the required steps or pieces of information needed for a given process.
Erik Mazzone is a practice management advisor for the North Carolina Bar Association. In a recent blog post, he offers four quick recommendations for using checklists in your practice:
1. Pause point: you must define a clear pause point at which the checklist is supposed to be used. Think, right before you file a complaint or execute an agreement.
2. Read-Do vs Do-Confirm: decide if you want the checklist to serve as a guide before a process is undertaken (read-do) or as a safety net before the process if finalized (do-confirm)?
3. Length: keep the checklist between 5 and 9 items and make sure it fits on one page. Longer is not better.
4. Easy to Read: keep it free of clutter and jargon and use upper and lowercase text in a sans serif font.
This is yet another “important-but-not-urgent” activity that will set you apart from your colleagues. It reflects a mindset to be at the top of your game. You’ll save time, become more profitable, and have happier clients and staff.
