Peter Pronovost's Checklists for Management Training
Ow! Darn! That HURTS!
While I stand by yesterday's post on the need not to mask organizational pain, I have to admit that the anesthesia from yesterday's surgery has worn off, and I feel like I've been stabbed. I'm definitely getting some useful feedback.
I dare not sneeze!
And now I'm having trouble remembering all the things the nurse told me, in my post-drugged haze in the recovery room, about all the things I need to do and not do. Above all, NOT do.
Come to think of it, did they give me a list of instructions? A checklist! Like the one they sent me before the operation about all the things I'd need to do to prepare for it.
I do remember one thing, though - the nurse laughingly asking me what I did for a living, because as they wheeled me into the operating room, already under the influence, I was apparently babbling about "bedside manner," about "checklists," and about a guy named Pronovost.
So since I'm getting that compulsive about it, I'd better unburden myself in print today - because there's a lesson here for us management trainers.
You've no doubt heard of Dr. Pronovost - Peter Pronovost, of Johns Hopkins. You're familiar with his astonishing discovery that low-tech checklists could reduce in-hospital- and post-operative infections. The results have proved him right, and now entire cities, states and even foreign countries' national health ministries - as in Spain - have committed to using the program throughout their hospital systems.
Just search on Pronovost's name for more fascinating links than you'll be able to take in - and then ask yourself how his tool, counter-intuitive in an age of ever more high-tech medicine, could apply to the increasingly tech-tool supported world of management.
After all, if physicans, as smart as they are - I mean, who's the doctor here, huh? - could benefit from using a tool as simple as a checklist, what about the up-and-coming managers you're training?
Other high-tech people use them too. As I was reminded the other day, pilots have long used pre-flight checklists, no matter how sophisticated their aircraft have become - and bad things happen when they don't follow those simple procedures.
Funny, but even the sharpest brains can benefit from a little rehearsal, a reminder, an organized approach to critical procedures. Check, check, check. Good to go!
And yet I've always had hard time getting people to realize that one of the most valuable features of AchieveGlobal's great management and leadership development programs is that they provide lots and lots of checklists (www.achieveglobal.com). I've tried to sell them to my participants as cheat sheets: slip a copy of the list of "key actions" you need to follow when leading an employee through the performance review session, for example, and don't be afraid to consult it. The skill will eventually become automatic, but in the meantime it's a guarantee that you will not lose your way - because some of what you have to do be effective is not what you'd automatically do.
Like: "Ask the other person for her view before providing your own." Again, counter-intuitive. It's only human to want to vent first, to stake out your position, to get there first. And you're a manager, in command. So you're going to need a reminder to check your natural responses until you get used to this new way of operating.
"So, am I supposed to be psychologist, then?" Yes - and that's only one of the many roles you'll be playing as a manager, and for each one there is a set of skills to be mastered. Not using a checklist in that crucial conversation, that crucial confrontation - to borrow the titles of other effective training programs (www.vitalsmarts.com) - will result in a contagious outbreak not unlike the ones Dr. Pronovost's straightforward, low-tech checklists are designed to contain.
All those years in medical school, and it comes down to a checklist.
My most effective managment training participants, the ones who have taken the skills to the job and applied them, not only saving the company grief and dissention and money, but actively boosting morale, effectiveness and overall performance, are those who've committed themselves to using these simple tools.
Yes, there probably is an app for that. But there's nothing like that piece of paper, that little card: it can't power down on you or crash on you - it won't let you down.
Try it - you'll like it!
Now, let's see...how much weight am I allowed to lift? Where is that darn checklist...I know I got one!
