When you’re managing a solo business, you never know what sort of problem is going to pop up. Something slips through the cracks. A detail gets lost. No matter how careful you are, you’re just one person, and there are only so many plates you can keep spinning at one time! What can you do to keep one from crashing? Your best strategy is to make things simple.
Checklists make things simple. They document routines. They standardize the tasks you do on a regular basis. They eliminate having to think your way through every step of an activity; you simply follow the checklist. You perform the same set of actions, in the same way, in the same order, every time.
As our business becomes more complex, we discover that our focus isn’t so easy to maintain and our memory isn’t as reliable as we thought. Especially when it comes to what should be routine matters, we’re shocked to find that obvious and important things are easily overlooked. Even well-entrenched habits can fail us. Checklists rescue us.
When we rely on habit alone, we’re likely to skip a step here and there even though they’re part of the routine. The assumption that this small step doesn’t really need to be done in this exact way, gives us permission to do it in some other way, which leads to dropping it altogether if we think it won’t make a difference. Unless a bad outcome is immediately apparent, the revised process gradually becomes the new habit. Eventually, the accumulation of seemingly unimportant changes or omissions can have grave and unforeseen consequences.
Remember this?
For want of a nail the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe the horse was lost;
For want of a horse the rider was lost;
For want of a rider the battle was lost;
For want of a victory the kingdom was lost—
All for the want of a horseshoe nail
Checklists provide protection against such failures. They remind us what to do and how to do it. They help us manage complexity and avoid problems that are just waiting for a lapse of some kind. With a thousand thoughts competing for our attention, checklists are a simple way to simplify our lives.
What processes in your business could you convert to checklists so they’re automatically done correctly every time? Share your thoughts in the comments…
If you’d like help streamlining this and other aspects of your business, schedule a no-obligation phone call with me here. Let’s see what we can do together!
