Would it be worth it if you could improve your business’ accuracy and effectiveness over night? What if a single simple step could build the health of your business 10%? Would it be worth the effort? What if this one step actually worked and applied to multiple businesses like: doctors, mechanics, builders and realtors? Would you be willing to take 1 hour to improve 20%?
Interesting questions. Here is how to improve. Take a regular pad of lined paper and a pencil. Make a list of critical functions for each transaction to be successful. As you complete the items, check the items off the list. Too simple? Think again.
In a recent book called “The Check List Manifesto: How to Get Things Right” by Atul Gawande a surgeon who also teaches at Harvard Medical School, Gawande talks about how a simple list in the surgery room would improve their chances of a successful surgery by 35%. How? Several ways, I will share two.
Reduced obvious mistakes by catching them before they escalate, cause damage and waste. In a medical facility, not washing your hands can lead to someone’s death. Is washing required for doctors? Yes. Does it always happen? Emergency overwrites unless you plan for emergency. Having owned my own construction company for a while I know there are times when I forgot to carry a ladder to a roof job. A check list would have caught the obvious.
Increased teamwork as everyone knew the plan, what to expect and who made the call when the decision got tough. I can only imagine how tense it can get when a patient’s life hangs in the balance. Surgery is messy, contrary to surgery if the realtor is expecting the finance guy to provide the termite inspection, no lives will be lost but closing will not happen.
The question is not “does it improve?” The real question is will you do it? Would you like open heart surgery from a surgeon that did not follow a detailed process that had proven to improve conditions and survival by 35%?
