A recent article on the BBC News website discussed the “Check List Culture” - and why it’s seen as more beneficial compared to the “Tick Box Culture”. Ticking the box, as discussed in the article, is about “pointless, burdensome, bean-counting bureaucracy gone mad” while having a checklist culture is about being “quick, beautifully simple, innovative, life-saving genius”. Straight away, you can see which one of those two camps you want to be in (that's right, "you are beautiful and innovative"), but what is the real difference between having a checklist and ticking the box? And why does shifting to a checklist culture benefit an organisation?
Q-Pulse was originally developed to move away from the tick box culture of Quality Management - that bureaucratic way of nagging people to make sure they’ve done their task, having a “Clipboard Charlie” constantly moaning to make sure people follow processes. Quality isn’t about making sure someone is forced to follow a process, it’s about ensuring that everyone is aware of what the processes are and, more importantly, how to have a say on improving those processes. That is allowing the individual who carries out the day-to-day tasks to have a say in how those tasks are being carried out. After all, those in the front line probably have a greater understanding of what improvements can be made. With traditional tick box mentality, there’s little input from those involved in carrying out the process and how to make improvements.
Following Processes: The Traditional Way Before Using Q-Pulse
But what does this have to do with rock stars and surgeons? The BBC article also discusses how the book “The Checklist Manifesto”, by surgeon Atul Gawande, has had a significant impact on organisations understanding why having a process (or checklist) is so important. Atul discusses in his book how adopting the stringent processes used by the airline industry - you can greatly reduce the number of preventable accidents. He himself started to adopt this approach in surgery, and it had a massive impact on reducing those preventable errors.
In his book, he mentions how 80s “Big Hair and Big Attitude” rock band Van Halen would demand a bowl of M&Ms be placed back stage at a concert. But it also stipulated that “all brown M&Ms must be removed”. Although this seems like rock star vanity at its supreme, lead singer David Lee Roth mentioned in his auto-biography exactly why they did this. When touring, the logistics behind a tour would be monumental and to make things run smoothly, the band would produce a book (about 126 pages long) stipulating what must be done to ensure the show went according to plan. This book covered all things such as floor weight support requirements, minimum door width, etc. Oh, and embedded in one of those pages was a simple request for the M&Ms - with all brown ones removed.
Eddie Van Halen's Worst Nightmare… (Image Source)
The reason for this was a simple test - if that bowl was missing, or heaven forbid there were brown M&Ms in that bowl then they instantly knew that their original list of requirements (or checklist) hadn’t been followed. And that would mean that the more important parts, such as the floor being strong enough to support the equipment, wouldn’t have been followed... and that could mean a potential mistake in the show. And the fans who’ve paid hard earned cash to see their favourite rock stars certainly wouldn’t like that!
Guns 'N' Roses really should have followed that simple brown M&M test (Image Source)
So next time you’re using a checklist to help your organisation follow quality processes according to plan, just think of yourself as being a modern day David Lee Roth.
By the way, this isn’t a photo, it’s a mirror. Check you out! (Photo: David Lee Roth. By © Neal Preston/CORBIS. Image Source)