Checklists and Systemic Frameworks are both important approaches to guiding human activity. But they are not interchangeable. Atul Gawande’s new wonderful book, Checklist Manifesto, does not make that clear. There is a real chance, that because of the book’s success and his being a great thinker generally, that many people may get confused about where checklist serve us well and where they cannot. The second half of that equation is “what a Systemic Framework makes possible”, that checklists cannot, and where such depth is overkill.

Life happens on different planes. There are some things where we have figured out how they work, likely because we do them over and over. Or because a book, our education or a recent study reported the best practice for a task, and we adopted them as our own.

In a professional sense, these tasks can include things as complex as surgery. Personally it can be as simple as making our favorite pot roast or pound cake. Some of these tasks have irreversible transforms that result in predictable results, or if an error slips in, it can have devastating consequences. People die. Cakes fall. Not of the same importance, but the same irreversibility. When we have something that we are not, at this moment, working on innovating the next improvement in, then a checklist gives us the ability to basically be on semi-automatic and know we will avoid skipping a critical step or making a life-threatening or destabilizing error.

Checklists also can work well where tasks can be broken into clear and distinct pieces, parts or steps that are demarcated by separate sub-tasks. This is the case when we make a shopping checklist. If we are smart we put it in the right sequence and do not end up with melting ice cream because we suddenly realize we forgot to drop off a suit at the cleaners because it got buried under the grocery bags. Validated and clear checklists serve these purposes well and clearly Gawande’s book, The Checklist Manifesto, offers us an important way to save lives in hospitals, reduce health care costs as a result, and provide a better way to train for such procedures. I am so glad he wrote it. I want them used in my hospital visit and on my almost weekly airline flight.

Now when do checklists fail to serve us. Checklists, by definition, prevent innovation. They stop evolution of dynamic systems by making us submit to the ritual of steps, repeated steps, the same steps every time. It is even difficult to see complex systems at work so we can engage them strategically. No assessment of the situation. They make it impossible to find better ways to do the same old things, more efficiently, more effectively. If we put everything into steps, we are basically put us all into semi-automatic for everything. That does not mean the surgeon does not have to stay alert and aware, but that the focus is different and reasonable so, than innovation. You cannot checklist (that is a verb) innovation.

Most importantly, checklist fail to serve us when consciousness is needed. Working on life-threatening tasks on semi-automatic is only good if nothing out of the ordinary happens. i.e. an airline crash in Anchorage. The pilots were half way through a checklist when “something” happened that caused them to stop mid-list. When they returned to their take-off protocol and taxi they misremembered where they were on the checklist. They taxied down the runway without putting the flaps down. They couldn’t get airborne and couldn’t figure why. The plane crashed. Checklist cannot replace or substitute for consciousness, which is the real problem that checklist are seemingly to try to deal with, not memory. It cannot be a replacement but it can be a backup for in the moment, in conjunction with a conscious person engaging with it. The more critical the task the more one needs consciousness.

Systemic Frameworks, serve to enable us to see a dynamic system in a unique and living way. That is they do so when we engage with a systemic framework with the intention of accomplishing this view of an event or situation. Systemic frameworks are intended to serve as a lens for systems thinking about living systems; events we need to “engage with” uniquely each time, without repeating familiar patterns. For example, when we engage with a child, a neighbor or a customer, we need to be present to what is happening in the moment. When Zappo’s gave its consumer service team freedom to “solve the customer’s problem” without procedures, contrary to other customer service teams without a checklist. It was because they wanted them to be relevant in each event and get better every time. It worked. Zappo’s became the #1 rated customer service company in the US in one year.

When we need to be relevant to a changing situation a checklist gets in the way, and systemic frameworks allow us to see the situation as it unfolds. An example of a systemic framework is a law of three.

A systemic framework helps us ask questions (which is another thing that does not come with a checklist, except “did I do that”). We ask such questions as:
• what is this person seeking to activate or move forward?
• what is restraining us joining with them on that happening? What are they asking us to be receptive to, and
• what is a higher order value we both share that helps us find an idea that works for both of us and satisfies the higher order values we both hold?

The primary role of a framework is to activate imaging of an event unfolding and see the dynamics AS THEY happen in an interactive way. The way to use a framework is with imaging engaged and not as a checklist. See the people in one’s mind and bring in their being and spirit as well as behavior and thinking. Otherwise you have turned a framework into a checklist and lost its value and potential.

So, by all means, device and use checklist in places where innovation is not only not necessary but not required. For example, a safety procedure in a factory where limbs can be lost— or a life. That does not mean that you do not, outside of the event, use a systemic framework to reflect and improve, but not in the moment of the task. It also does not mean that your “go to sleep” on the checklist because there will always be variances as with the Alaska pilots.

When you need innovation, relevance to a present moment or person and when uniqueness is important to offer, none of which can be handled by repeating a pattern, then use a systemic framework. Do not bother with the level of consciousness required with a systemic framework if you do not intend to improve or innovate, there is no need to watch for dynamic changes as they unfold and you are not trying to be strategically distinctive in a situation. Just follow a pattern you know works. Checklists are for pattern following; systemic frameworks are for pattern generating. Both have a very important purpose, but they are very different and do not work well when used in the wrong events.
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