THE CHECKLIST MANIFESTO AND STANDARD WORK

August 23, 2011

 By Sam Maniar, Ph.D.

On a recent trip to visit a PRADCO client, my wife suggested I grab one of the business books she was reading The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande or Take Back Your Life!: Using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to Get Organized and Stay Organized by Sally McGhee.  Given that The Checklist Manifesto looked like a very quick read, I chose that one.

After reading the book, my initial impression was that although the anecdotes were staggering, the book was simple and obvious.  Clearly checklists are important tools in helping us remember the crucial steps involved when taking complex actions.  As Gawande points out, using checklists can help us avoid errors of ineptitude.

Once my colleague and I arrived at our client’s office and began coaching various employees regarding their leadership effectiveness and productivity, though, the value of the book became clear.  The client, Modine Manufacturing Company, preaches the importance of standard work.  The concept of standard work is nothing new to manufacturing organizations and/or companies that embrace the tenets of lean or Six Sigma.  By standardizing your work, you help to ensure you focus on the most important things and waste less time on the trivial aspects of your job.  It also helps to improve consistency.

Modine not only advocates for each employee to identify their standard work, but they encourage people to measure their adherence and identify reasons as to why standard work events did not happen.  In essence, standard work is a checklist of sorts.  It allows Modine’s employees to stay on track and to remember the most important things they need to do.

But standard work is different from checklists in that it is not intended to be a compliance tool.  It is intended to be more of a key element for improvement.  According to the Director of Modine Operating System, Jeff Uitenbroek:

“Using Standard Work allows us to create a bit of order out of the chaos that is normal business, but the most important function of Standard Work is as a tool for learning. It is the Plan of PDCA [Plan-Do-Check-Act]. As a template for what is normal, we easily see problems or deviations from normal.  By identifying obstacles that prevent us from accomplishing the work we plan to do, we can adjust and overcome those obstacles.  This is the key element in rapid improvement.”

In many ways, our role as coaches at PRADCO is to help our clients identify and plan for their standard work as well.  For example, if someone is working on developing their bench strength, we help them identify who their targets might be and how to incorporate a regular mentoring cadence with those people.  From there, the coaching is about style and approach, such as how to motivate and inspire people to do more.

It’s easy to say, “My work differs from day-to-day, and there is nothing standard about it.”  Nevertheless, as our CEO Terry Owen likes to say, “I’ll bet you a nickel that…” there are more standardized processes in your job than you think.  By taking a closer look and making a checklist of your monthly tasks, for example, you are less likely to make a mistake and more likely to be prepared and efficient.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and/or feedback.  What are your thoughts?  How do you implement standard work at your organization?  How do you incorporate coaching into standard work?

3 Comments | Coaching, PRADCO, Sam Maniar, Standard Work, Time Management | Permalink
Posted by PRADCO

Time Management

December 2, 2010

By Gene Czuchnicki

If your job is in an office environment, then you are probably being pulled in a variety of directions every day and could use more time to address all the issues that cross your desk.  Here at PRADCO, we are taking a look at how we are doing our work to see if we can do some simple things to improve our efficiency while in the office.  I thought it might be useful to review some of the techniques that most of us know, but for one reason or another fail to consistently use.

Let’s begin with getting into the office and starting the day.  Most sources recommend establishing a plan before you get caught up in the daily routine to give yourself guidance on where you are going and what you want to accomplish.  Yet, most of us try to wing it.  We check e-mail, see what is at the top of the pile that needs to be addressed, and then go at it.  Before starting work, develop a list of the top five things you want to accomplish that day.  The number five is not a hard and fast number.  Some days you may only list two tasks and some days you might list fifteen.  The idea, however, is to set some specific goals for yourself so that when one task is completed you know what you should be addressing next.

Now that you have started the day, shortly thereafter the interruptions begin – e-mails, phones, new material dropped in the in-box, colleagues who drop in, etc.  Such is the life in the modern office.  What can you do?  How about setting aside blocks of time to address similar tasks?  Let’s deal with the issue of e-mail.  No matter how you look at it, you are connected to the co-worker down the hall, to family and friends outside of the office, and even to those once in a lifetime opportunities that seem to come from countries overseas.  Each new message calls for your immediate attention and potentially an immediate response.  However, each e-mail that is opened causes a gap in the process that you were addressing. These delays require you to partially redo what you did a moment ago in order to “catch up”, and this slows down the work and reduces your efficiency.  As a potential solution, ignore e-mails for some period of time – how about an hour.  Deal with whatever you need to do in a consistent fashion and when you are done, move on to the next issue.  Once an hour, process your e-mails.  When you are done, turn your attention to the next project and leave your electronic messages alone for another hour.  Repeat this cycle, or one that works better for you, for the rest of your work life.

While e-mails seem to be the most distracting, in your work environment it could possibly be the phones.  Unless you are in customer service or where you need to take calls from outside of the office, you can send all your incoming calls to voicemail and then block out a time to respond to them.  Again, the idea is to bring all similar activities together and deal with them at one sitting.  The in-box on your desk can also be managed this way.  You control your in-box, it does not control you!

Another issue is when colleagues drop into your office.  Most of us want to be accessible to co-workers. Work for most people involves some level of collaboration and social interaction.  However, if you are dealing with a situation that requires your undivided attention and concentration – close the door to your office.  If your office environment involves cubicles, find a space that can be made private – a cubicle at the end of the row (where co-workers will not think to look for you), an unused conference room, etc.  Use this quiet time to deal with what needs to get done before returning to your regular office space.

These techniques, of course, do not exhaust the list of ways to increase your efficiency.  They are offered in the spirit of helpfulness.  We all have too much to do and not enough time to do it.  Learning to better use our available time can make our lives a little easier.

What time management techniques have been successful for you?

1 Comment | Gene Czuchnicki, Time Management | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by PRADCO

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