Creativity Central [Marty Baker]

I'm not happy with Dan and Chip Heath -- authors of "Made to Stick" and contributing writers for Fast Company.  I was about to publish a blog on how to use "pre-flight" checklists to accelerate innovation when my March Fast Company arrived and they beat me to the intellectual punch.

That's a good thing. Because it means the technique has lifted itself from the bottom floor of best practices and made it back into the board room.  Listen to Dan and Chip's take on checklist value, " The holy grail of checklists may be the one created by Dr. Peter Pronovost of the John Hopkins School of Medicine.  Intensive Care Unites (ICUs) often use IV lines to deliver medication and these lines can become infected, causing nasty health complications.  Pronovost frustrated by these preventable events, compiled a five-step checklist.

The checklist contained straightforward (i.e) common sense advice:  doctors should wash their hands before inserting an IV, a patient's skin should be cleaned with an antiseptic at the point of insertion and so forth." 

The results?  When Michigan's ICUs put the checklist into practice over an 18 month period -- line infections were virtually eliminated -- saving the hospital an estimated $175 million.  Yes, one hundred and seventy five million dollars  -- because they no longer needed to treat the associated complications.  And it saved nearly 1500 lives.

Now let's talk about the Hubble Trouble.  After its 1990 launch, it was found that the main mirror suffered from spherical aberration due to faulty quality control during its manufacturing, severely compromising the telescope's capabilities.  Here's where it gets even more interesting:

A design defect in a measuring device, probably compounded by human error in the device's assembly, caused the mirror flaw in the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope, a federal panel said Thursday.

An investigation panel had previously reported that there was a 1.3-millimeter spacing error in the assembly of an optic instrument used to guide the machines that ground the surface of the telescope's main mirror. As a result, the mirror was deformed and it is unable to produce the precise images its designers hoped to achieve.

The key is that even when there is no ironclad "right" way, checklists can help people avoid blind spots in complex environments.   

Where could your business benefit from a checklist?  Well, if you listen to Gerald Haman of Solution People, virtually everywhere.  Haman is a big advocate and thought leader on questionating and question banks Qbanks.  It's a process that allows incremental innovation in nearly every area of your business. 

For example, the Pronovost IV checklist could have evolved by asking "In what ways could we reduce the number of infections with IV lines?"  One question -- and many answers. Wash hands, use antiseptic etc.  That one question led to millions in dollars in savings.   Haman has developed hundreds of question banks on a variety of subjects.  His successful meeting Qbank has over 150 questions.

Basically, checklists are insurance against over-confidence or under training.   "A checklist doesn't have to mean huge binders full of obsessive and likely counterproductive process documentation.  Checklists simply make screw ups less likely," say the Heath brothers.

One of the subjects I talk about in my Inotivity Seminars is how you (or your company) can leverage the knowledge you already have to develop Qbanks and checklists that evolve.  Isn't that worth $175 million?  Check out Solution People from the blog roll on the left side of this page.  Or link to http://www.fastcompany.com.

If you would like a free PDF book on questionating and Qbanks, please send a request to inotivity@gmail.com and use the subject line "request PDF."