SUCCESS

Harvard Business Review’s Justin Bell likes lists as well, and provides a handy way to think about the different ways lists can be used. What sort of checklist should you be using?

To-Do List.  Uniquely personal this list-of-all-lists helps you plan and prioritise your day, your week, your year.

Task List.   Step-by-step procedure for getting something done, such as starting a chainsaw or finding contact notes in a CRM     system. Task lists are best suited for technical endeavours that involve too many details to remember.

Troubleshooting List. Methodically determines what went wrong and how to fix it.

Coordination List.  A complicated project, such as building a home or an airliner, requires a coordination list so all participants are in contact with each other when they need to be.

Discipline List.  A standard set of procedures or considerations that are evaluated before investing time or resources. A venture capitalist’s due diligence process is a discipline list.

Criteria of Merit list.  When Olympics judges awarded American figure skater, Evan Lysacek a gold medal over peeved Russian competitor,  Yevgeny Plushenko, they were using a COM List to apply agreed upon criteria to the performances. You might use a similar list as you evaluate job candidates, project requests or vendor selection.

The key question for individuals or businesses using lists is when to formalise them? If South Africa kept a list of presents given to heads of state, President Jacob Zuma could have avoided the embarrassment of giving the Queen the same exact chess set presented to her royal highness 14 years earlier by Nelson Mandela. “Oh, another set,” Zuma said, spying it across the room.


Sean Silverthorne

Failure: The Secret to Success

Follow-Me Leaders