AUA: When Do Well-Meaning Checklists Turn Into Compliance Theater?

**Rodney Evans** (0:02)
Hey, y'all, welcome back to At Work with The Ready. I'm Rodney Evans, and that guy is my friend, Sam Spurlin.

**Sam Spurlin** (0:07)
Hello, everyone, and hello, especially to you, Rodney.

**Rodney Evans** (0:11)
Thanks, Sam. Every other week, we tackle one tough, thought-provoking listener question and give you a few ideas that we hope are helpful.
So let's dive in. Sam, what do you have for us this week?

**Sam Spurlin** (0:22)
This week's question is, how do we go about building a workplace that supports and protects the positive proven methods for doing good work while avoiding checklistification, which I appreciate that word checklistification. I think the person is using it in the sense of kind of checklists and what they call compliance brain. Like we're putting a process in place just to make sure nothing bad ever, ever happens.

**Rodney Evans** (0:55)
Yeah. In the original question, the person also mentioned the tension between the Sunshine Zone and the Twilight Zone. And I am going to get to that because you're pointing to something that like only the real heads will actually probably pick up on. But just like to crack open the creme brulee, I would first start by questioning the premise of like whether checklistification is inherently bad.
So I love checklists.

**Sam Spurlin** (1:19)
Atul Hawande would tell you checklists are great. Checklist Manifesto author?

**Rodney Evans** (1:24)
I don't know who that is.

**Sam Spurlin** (1:25)
Okay, it's a great book.

**Rodney Evans** (1:27)
Okay, great.
I love checklists as like particularly defaults. Like, you know, there's a reason that commercial airline pilots have a checklist that they go through. Like, you know, when we open a deal at The Ready, Notion auto-populates a project steward checklist of things to do. I have a default packing checklist because I'm tired of forgetting my fucking medication. Like, I wouldn't necessarily vilify the checklist or the checklistification of work on its face.

**Sam Spurlin** (1:59)
Yeah.

**Rodney Evans** (1:59)
I think where it goes wrong is that we're doing things on the checklist that are either are not valuable or we're only doing things on the checklist to show someone else that they're done. Right. But having a checklist of the default shit that always has to be done, like finishing your expenses and entering your shit into the client invoice schedule and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, every month so that our books are clean at the ready, like, that's not bad. And the great thing is, done well, nobody has to check the checklist because the checklist is the accountability mechanism and we use it to hold ourselves accountable so that we don't have to be compliant to someone else, we just have to be compliant to the activities that are required to do something.

**Sam Spurlin** (2:46)
Yeah, the whole checklist thing makes me think about like complicated versus complex, like complicated problems really benefit from checklists.
You can break down a complicated problem into a series of steps, which are great for a checklist. And you may be expecting me to say complex problems are not good for checklists and I was going to say that, but I just had a thought, which is I think there's still a version of checklists that can be useful in a more complex space, which is not like, hey, did you do like, did you like take this step? But it's like, have you thought about it in this way yet? Have you thought about the problem through this lens? Have you thought about it through this lens? And using a checklist to be somewhat systematic about trying to sense make around a complex problem, I think is a great use of a checklist.

**Rodney Evans** (3:36)
I love that you gave me an idea, which is like, take my packing checklist as a very good example of what you're talking about. The bad way to do that would be like, I went somewhere and it rained and now on my packing checklist forever is a raincoat. Because nine times out of 10, I'm not bringing a raincoat.
And travel is inherently complex. There are a lot of factors beyond our control, etc. So my checklist is all of the things that I always need, like my medicine and a toothbrush and pants. But there is a section.

**Sam Spurlin** (4:12)
The big three, as we call them.

**Rodney Evans** (4:16)
The travel trifecta, if you will.
But there is like a sort of other section that has something on it literally that says like weather, question mark. Which to your point is like, hey, Dum Dum, did you think about whether you need sun? And then it's like, oh, I need sunscreen. Oh, I need a rain jacket. Oh, I need a hat and gloves. But I don't add all of that stuff to the checklist. I just have some prompts for the complexity factors of travel, like passports and adapters. And there is a thing there that's international. And then that is other stuff. So I love the framing because I do think that there is a way to not try to checklist your way into complexity, but still have it be incredibly useful.