93. Focus on the hard stuff: The power of checklists and job aids

Using these small workplace tools doesn’t take away skill – it helps to focus it

I write a lot here about engaging with and embracing uncertainty. The underlying premise of both Solutions Focus and Host Leadership is that we can’t know in advance what’s going to happen in a given situation. Rather than apply some pre-determined recipe, we should advance a step at a time while remaining alert and adjusting for what we learn. But does that mean we have to proceed with a blank slate every time? No.

This time we’re looking at the power of checklists and job aids. These are simple yet effective means to help us find safe and strong ways ahead, particularly where there’s a lot of noise and factors in play.

A hint in time…

Many years ago I bought a printer/scanner on eBay. The old one had broken down but I still had a big stock of ink cartridges, so I found a similar used model for sale at a good price. When it arrived, I noticed that the previous owner had added something. On the document feeder atop the machine was a hand-written sticker. It said (in both English and Chinese):

Face up!

Anyone who has used such a machine will instantly get the idea. On approaching a photocopier/scanner, all our instincts are to put the document face down; after all, that’s how it can be scanned. But the document feeder will (in most cases) turn the paper over as it feeds in – so you need to put it face UP to start the process, not face down. I have done the wrong thing many times in the past and ended up with copies of the (usually blank) backs of the pages.

Here, some clever person had recognised the potential for error and added the sticker themselves. By putting it right on the machine, they made sure that the reminder came at just the right moment – at the instant the operator was preparing to insert the document. It’s very brief – not a complete set of instructions about how to use the machine. It is the key thing to consider at that moment. And it was totally effective! I never put stuff the wrong way up again. This is a very simple (perhaps the simplest?) example of a job aid.

Job aids

When I set up in management development in the early 1990s, one of my favourite books was Smart Training by Clay Carr. Carr wrote a lot of very practical books for everyday managers, including Choice, Chance and Organizational Change (1996) which was well ahead of its time in embracing a complexity perspective – it just missed my survey of organisational complexity work that year.

In Smart Training, Carr addressed a fundamental point about performance at work. Suppose that something isn’t happening the way you (as the manager) hope. Back in day, we might have assumed that some sort of training would be a solution – but that’s a premature assumption. Carr points out that there are two possible scenarios where there’s a performance deficit: people can’t do it, or people don’t do it. If it’s the first, then some training is indeed in order. But if people know how to do it but don’t put that into practice, then it’s not a good way forward.

In the latter case, some encouragement or incentive is required. The inhumane organisation might rush to put in detailed procedures and draconian punishments. A more humane organisation, however, might look to make it easier to do things right. That’s where a job aid can come in.

Here’s simple and workable definition of a job aid (from venngage.com):

Job aids are simple, clear instructions on how to do a work task. They remind employees how to complete a task the right way, preventing mistakes in the workplace.

Job aids are also known as work aids, worksheets, checklists, one pagers, cheat sheets, or memory joggers.

At the key moment

A job aid isn’t a substitute for proper training. It is, however, an excellent adjunct to it. I ran hundreds of workshops for trainers over the years, and used the example of learning to parachute. When’s the best time to learn to make a parachute jump? Answer (which everyone always said) – just before you have to make a parachute jump! Not three years beforehand. This was a relevant point at the time, since many of my clients were accustomed to have long management training course (lasting for weeks at a time). They would be taught about all sorts of things; interviewing, delegating, time management, leadership, project management, handling disciplinary processes and so on.

Then, the organisation would note that ‘they’ve been trained’ and send them better-equipped back to work. The snag, of course, was that there was little in the way of addition support and anyone asking for it would be assumed to be inadequate, forgetful, empty-headed or worse. This clearly isn’t a totally successful basis for good performance.

The point about a job aid is that it’s there at just the moment it’s needed – to refresh the memory, to propose a sequence, to make sure than vital steps are not missed. When I worked as a reactor physicist at Berkeley Nuclear Power Station at the start of my career, we had some excellent job aids. These were ‘unofficial’ at that time, hand-written and photocopied single sheets to support carrying out some routine tasks.

Typically, the sheet had boxes to write down readings, numbers which the physicist on duty would take from instruments in the control room or around the plant. Then we would return to the office and follow the instructions on the sheet, which gave calculations to make to produce a final number (perhaps to do with the efficiency of the turbines or some such) which would be recorded and perhaps shared with others on the site or at headquarters. Having the worksheet made this very straightforward; having to remember the calculations every time would have been disastrous. These days, such things are probably automated and undoubtedly officially approved. In my day they were just my colleagues and predecessors making life easier for ourselves.

Checklists – a superb job aid

One type of job aid that has come into much wider use in the past two decades or so is the checklist. American surgeon and public health researcher Atul Gawande has written about checklists in medicine and elsewhere. His excellent book The Checklist Manifesto is a terrific read. He gives very personal accounts of how checklists have prevented disasters in many contexts; airline pilots, construction, surgery and more.

What makes a good checklist? Gawande gets to the heart of the matter:

There are good checklists and bad... Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people’s brains off rather than turn them on.

Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical. Gawande, Atul. The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right (p. 120). Profile. Kindle Edition.

Checklists are often introduced in the teeth of opposition from the professionals concerned. After all, they are highly trained and very experienced, right? What do they need with a mickey-mouse list? But again and again, we find that these professionals make many more errors without the checklist than with it.

Checklists work by ‘offloading cognitive strain’. They don’t replace the skill of the user. Rather, they allow the user to relax and, by being sure they are doing the most critical steps, to focus on the specifics of the situation. This is important and necessary; in the UK in particular we prize improvising and ‘muddling through’, so there can be additional resistance to structure. But where there’s a lot at stake and many parameters to take into account, a checklist can literally be a lifesaver.

Conclusions

A humane and effective workplace will be helping people perform vital, difficult or infrequent tasks to the best of their ability. Every day at work isn’t an exam – make it easier when you can, so that people focus on what’s hard. Job aids and checklists are a great way to support your people give of their best, and remind them that it’s OK to get help when things are confusing or tricky.

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Dates and Mates

Atul Gawande is an inspiring and polymathical figure. His excellent website https://atulgawande.com leads to all his work including four very good books. On top of The Checklist Manifesto, his 2018 book Being Mortal is an superb look at end-of-life care and how the patient’s wishes are key in helping them towards ‘a good death’ (which can be at odds with the medical profession’s desire to keep them alive at all costs. This is a very solution-focused position, in my view.

Atul Gawande MD (photo: Lifebox)

There will be one more Steps To A Humanity Of Organisation in 2025, on Wednesday 10 December. This Substack will then be on a holiday break until Wednesday 14 January 2026.