Episode 126: The Checklist - Simple Way to Eliminate Stress and Create Productivity

Welcome to another edition of "Around with Randall" your weekly podcast for making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett.

I'm excited to be here with you on this, the latest edition of "Around with Randall" and of course I'm Randall. As I look at the landscape of the work that I do with clients, and then I'll add in a personal element that kind of contributed to today's topic, the world that I would call at least describe it is chaotic whether it's budgetary concerns and conversations with Finance offices, which we covered a couple of podcasts ago about ways in which you can work and and figure that out to your benefit as much as possible, to the challenges and the uncertainty in the economy. And we talked about inflation about 15 podcasts ago, both from a fundraising perspective and what's due in inflationary times, and in bear markets with planned giving, but just in general there's a lot of uncertainty right now. And uncertainty leads to chaos, and that then leads to not being effective and efficient in a lot of moving pieces.

This was all really brought home for me with my son in today's conversation, discussions, about checklists and the importance. and let me tell you how I got here. But if you listen to the podcast or know me at all, I talk about my family quite often. I'm blessed beyond belief. Our son is pretty bright and generally each school comes pretty easy for him and we have recently conferences and there's no doubt about it, it's intelligence. But all of a sudden we're starting to hear about things being late and maybe not getting everything done when he should and be, not because he's misbehaving in the class, but because basically he's not organized. And what you realize as a parent is that it's not until you have these moments of challenge and consternation before you real, before you kind of have this epiphany moment really that it's time to step in and and be helpful, to be guiding. And I told my son, and look I'm not here to be your friend I'm here to be your dad, and there's a difference between the two.

And so we began a process over this past couple of days about helping him organize himself and what we came to realize is that he had no ability to understand the value of a checklist and being able to write down the things that were due when they're due, and why that would be important. And then that allowed me to kind of contemplate or have some discernment around some of the clients that I'm dealing with and some of things in their life, professionally, and the fact that in some ways they're going through the same thing. Much bigger stakes and more complex and complicated, but very much along the same lines of gosh there's so many moving pieces and I'm not as effective efficient as I need to be to get to the end result, which is success. Whatever that success can be defined as which led me to think about the simplicity of a checklist and how we don't do a very good job, most of the time as professionals, about keeping track of the things that we have to do. And then that led me to well, why is that important? And that gets us right to today's conversation.

So the first thing I want to start with is the, for me, kind of the intrinsic value of checklists. I believe in them so much. I'll give you two levels. Number one is is if you work with me at all you know that I have a checklist for campaign feasibility studies, 128, 138 steps that we need to go through at least account for if it's a campaign counsel there's another 109 week, and various sub points which we'll talk about in a few moments or minutes. But why those are important if you're doing grateful patient there's a checklist by month. What are we going to do? How are we going to do it? It certainly can move, but we know what we have, what we're going to do together. There's nothing that I do in Hallett Philanthropy or pretty much in my career that doesn't have a checklist.

And then I began to think about it from the perspective of the value of checklists and my own daily life. I actually have two. I have my to-do list that I keep in Outlook that's client or business related, and I'm adding all the time, and you know checking them off when they get done. And then I have in my CRM a business checklist that I keep separate because that deals more with outreach to potential clients in the tracking. And by the way if you're a gift officer it's just like your CRM. Who am I qualifying? Where are they in the cultivation process? Have I made the ask? How am I closing? It's no different. It's kind of interesting.

So I have these two checklists and I always talk about the four monitors at my office during the week that literally on one on the far right is the checklist that has everything I do every day, business related, client related. And then the second one over one to the left is all of the CRM ones. They're always up and I'm always checking against them. So I realized I'm a check list nerd. It's my thing.

Why are checklists important? What is the value of them? Let's talk about that from the philosophical perspective for a few minutes. Number one, checklists provide a sense of clarity and productivity. If I know what I've got to do today that's on a checklist, plus maybe what's on my calendar for calls and appointments and outreach, and the same for you, calls, outreach, appointments, meetings, then you know how to get things done. You know how to prioritize things. That creates clarity in what needs to get done on a daily basis. That clarity can help when things are chaotic, I.E, if you're able to put stuff in and put due dates and kind of know when things are scheduled. What you learn about yourself is how long it takes to do things. And that clarity creates an efficiency and effectiveness. So the first thing is just realizing there's a clarity in knowing what to get done and when to do it.

I think this was really important for my son in particular because when we started his checklist of the different projects for third graders he began to realize, oh well I got to do this one now because it's due sooner than if I do this one, which is due later or which we got a little bit. I think the next day actually, oh I can complete this one in 10 minutes, which was accurate, and then I can get into this other thing that's going to be a little bit longer. So even the nine-year-old figured out the clarity, which begs the question why we all don't use checklists more often, just for that purpose beyond that it also creates personal responsibility. I can speak for myself that when in the Outlook something happens and we have a scenario in which the the line goes red or the task goes red because I'm behind, I don't like that, or in my CRM if I see it and I'm behind I don't like that either, and so it presses me to go get that done. That accountability, I mean the clients I guess would know if I'm not getting something done, or my accountant if it's financial, or business development. But really this goes back to the idea, leading and lagging indicators, which I think was podcast number 33 or so around getting out ahead and staying ahead of the things that might get you in trouble.

So one way to look at it is that personal accountability through checklists creates the ability for you to see, to avoid problems down the road, to see what's coming. It also, number three lessons rework how often is it that we get started on something, we get drug into something else, and we can't remember where we were. And a checklist can, you can break it apart. I got the first part done, got to finish the second part with a note. It causes you not to waste time on things that don't require it.

It's also highly, number four, highly motivational having a checklist. There's nothing better for me professionally, besides seeing client success, then checking that check mark. Man, that feels good. And it may be the dumbest of things in terms of something that needs to be done, but boy do I like when I check it. If there's actual scientific evidence in the brain about the idea of the sense of euphoria when you accomplish a goal, I didn't realize it's power. And I speak about it with maybe a little more emotion today than I did about four or five days ago when my son started checking things off the list, and he went to bed last night I said how you feeling because I feel great. I got a lot done. He's not any smarter than he was three days, four days ago. He's more organized, but he feels better about himself. He's more motivated. Kind of amazing.

That also then brings in this idea of number five, preventing burnout. If you feel like you're accomplishing something then you're less likely you feel like you're burning out of it. I also will put this in a little different way. It's not meant to equate it emotionally but just contextually. There's a term that I love to use, paralysis by analysis, meaning when things get so long or wide or there's too many things to do you can't figure out what to do, and I watched that happen in my son, I've watched that happen in some clients as well in circumstances where there's a lot of moving pieces and they're not sure what to do. And by the way, that's the reason in a campaign feasibility study, a grateful patient build, a concierge build, a grateful patient all of which have checklists for me, allow me and allow the clients to not go through paralysis by analysis. I can't get all this done. Great. Let's just get done with what we can that's on the list that's due today, tomorrow, yesterday, or this week. What it does is it gives in and breaks down the the tasks in a way that prevents burnout because you don't feel overwhelmed.

I think the, I think it's number six is maybe the most important. If you do task lists correctly you can break out things into sub tasks. So when I'm doing a campaign feasibility study it may say, you know, we're going to conduct interviews. Well that alone isn't helpful. When is the interview instrument due in terms of final development? How do I share it? What's the approval process? What's the process that we're going to have to develop to ensure I can get interviews? There's like 15 or 20 things that go along with that, and that's something that I think was the most valuable to my son. Pretty basic is that he looked at these projects, like I've got to do a book report or a, or he's doing a report on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and it's intro details. You know, impact, conclusion. Now you might think about those four things and go that's easy. For a nine-year-old that's overwhelming. But when we broke it down into the subtask. No we're not just doing Kareem, can you get the intro done today? Oh yeah, can you get the the kind of the the bio, the basics of who he was and what he did in his life? Yeah tomorrow, the next day can we get the impact? Then can we have the conclusion? It was unbelievable to look at him and see the look in his eye when he realized he'd finished, or the draft of it. How do you break down bigger things into smaller tasks and put them on a checklist with a due date?

And lastly, it helps us not to miss something. It helps us to realize that if we do the subtask that I can go back and add and see if there's a big hole, and that's the reason I think in all of the work that I do as a part of my job and engaging clients those task lists make sure we're both on the same page and make sure we're not missing something big. Even if we know it's done we're gonna leave it on the checklist and check it. Even if something I know they have like we're doing a grateful patient building data's and is something they just do brilliantly, I still have all the data points, what data we need, how does it work, what's HIPAA, all these things to ensure we have it.

Clarity and productivity, number one. Number two is personal accountability. Number three is it lessens the idea of rework, or missing, or having to redo things. Number four it creates motivation when you feel like you've accomplished something. Number five, that helps decrease burnout. Number six, it'll allow for the creation of subtasks so that you know exactly kind of one of the pieces that make up the whole in a particular bigger project, or need, or issue. And number seven is it cause you not to miss things. Checklists permeate life so if you're an airline pilot all you do is a checklist in the cockpit and I'm certainly no expert but it's checklists, pre-flight checklist, take off checklist, you know, landing checklist, even in emergencies you hear the stories of there is a critical situation for the airplane and immediately they're grabbing a binder and they turn to whatever page that issue might be the engines go out there's a checklist. They're not guessing because there's chaos and that checklist creates a sense of direction based on non-emotional thinking as to what needs to be done. Now that's extreme, but it's true. Checklists we see in surgery. So Atul Gawande wrote a book called the Checklist Manifesto about the idea that checklists and the ability to use them in surgery is critically important. High emotion, lots of moving pieces, lots of people help. We got a checklist. Everybody on the same page. So what is it you can do? What are the tools out there? Well here's the good news. There's a million of them. It just just requires you to create a pattern.

I remember when I first became a professional there were things called the Franklin planner named after Ben Franklin. And historically he is credited with being amongst the first to really professionalize checklists. I'm sure queens and kings in Europe kept checklists but in terms of what we do today Ben Franklin was amongst the first. And there was a company that took advantage of that and created the Franklin planner and there was a checklist it was a written book with all your stuff during the day and you move stuff over. Then came Palm Pilots, some of you may remember those. And then came the smartphone and the integration with Microsoft, and now you have your task list within Outlook or if you use Google they've got their own, or you can use one from online. It doesn't make a difference. What I'd advise is pick one and start every day with that task list open, and that's probably the greatest tactical advantage or at least recommendation I can make is if you have to work to find your task list or the tasks, then you're going to end up not getting what you want out of it. So if you've ever been on a zoom call and we're working through something I always have note cards. You know they're either sticky notes or holding up here on the camera for those on YouTube or in my office, there's note cards, three by five. I'm always doing stuff. Here's the trick. When I'm done with that call although I was taking notes, I'm immediately transferring those notes into the Outlook task list either as one major task with subs, or five or six tasks independently that need to build towards the final, whatever the need was, the resolution. The key is, can you get them someplace where you can use them? And then number two can you access them? I have access obviously to Outlook on my phone so that I can see what are the tasks that need to be done that day or that are coming up, and they become the catalyst for my planning, cross-reference that with my calendar. I got pretty much what I'm going to be doing today. The key is whatever you use online or use on your phone, or you use combination of phone and you know Google or Outlook or your Yahoo has one, when you, or Gmail has one, they all have them, is to keep it open. Keep it used, keep it in front of your eyes and type it in or write it in, and use it because the minute you stop using it is the minute you get into trouble. And the effectiveness and the idea of accountability, and, you know, lessening rework and creating motivation and the the idea of burnout, and creating subtasks and then obviously not missing things. All is Lost if you don't actually have it in front of you. I'm not saying you need four monitors with one monitor dedicated to one, but it certainly would help if you have it in front of you all the time. Checklists, not a heavy subject, but I think if you use it correctly and if particularly if there's chaos and a lot of moving pieces, a lot of things to remember, getting things into that checklist might just be something simple that makes you much more accountable, effective, efficient, and feel good about what you're doing, and that's a winner any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Don't forget to reach out to me at Hallettphilanthropy.com. That's podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. Check out the blogs, 90-second reads about various things going on critically important to kind of thinking and seeing and feeling what's going on in the industry, or just in leadership in general. That's also at Hallettphilanthropy.com. Remember it is interesting right now. There's a lot of indecision, unknown going on in the world that affects nonprofit work, and what you do is critically important. I hope you know that I hope you feel that. I hope you can see through the morose towards the value that you bring. Don't forget, some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, then there are those who wanted what happened and in our world you are somebody who makes things happen and partners with someone who does to make those people and the things we believe in who are wondering what happened a better possible series of possibilities. That's important, so thank you for what you do. I appreciate you and your time. Share this with a friend if you think it'd be helpful, but nevertheless, I will look forward to seeing you right back here on another edition of "Around with Randall". Don't forget, make it a great day.