Mirror. Signal. Manoeuvre.
Drilled into us by our Driving Instructors. It's one of the simplest checklists there is.
Although we've all seen drivers who do the sequence the wrong way around! Funny - as long as no-one gets hurt.
We all drift away from procedures when familiarity makes us lose sight of risk. Leaders in safety critical sectors often have to remind people to check first, indicate what they are about to do and then do the task - even if they know the task inside out and could do it in their sleep.
I'm currently reading a book called 'The Checklist Manifesto' which is a fascinating insight into the power of a simple checklist. Often the items on a checklist are so obvious that we disregard them. Yet even the simplest checklist can result (and has resulted) in saving of millions of dollars/euro, and countless lives.
As a leader, if a checklist will save lives, don't be afraid to insist and keep insisting on its use, but also be mindful of the time it takes. Getting buy-in from teams will involve you acknowledging that time is needed to accommodate the checklist and creating that time in their workflow.
Until next time, take care,
Lisa.
