A Practice Revolution?

The next quantum leap in your practice could be from the lowest technology device available: a checklist.

I spent the last eight years building Ensemble Financial Services.  In my role there, I advised financial professionals on enhancing the effectiveness, efficiency and profitability of their practices.  One topic we spent a lot of time on, and what continues to generate a large portion of questions from advisors, was how to more effectively leverage technology.  While I plan to continue working with advisors on various practice management issues, including this one,  I have been increasingly fascinated by the importance of an idea in almost exactly the opposite direction: The power of the lowly, unloved, unsexy, distinctly low-tech checklist.

This isn't the first time we have seen a decidedly unsophisticated tool make all the difference in our practices.  In 2008, when all our fancy analytic gadgetry failed us, it was the telephone keeping us in closer, more frequent contact with our clients, preserving our relationships and our businesses.

My conviction is that you should invest most of your time on your core competency and outsource or delegate the rest.  Two significant books took that philosophy in an unexpected direction.  Getting Things Done by David Allen and The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.  I wrote an article reviewing Gowande for Transitions Magazine which really got this project going.

Certainly good electronic tools are of critical importance to practice management, but the power here is in the concepts.  The majority of the benefit can be gained simply with pen and paper. But even on paper, I am discovering there are principals behind making it all work, and that's what we will be doing here: Exploring what makes this humble tool so powerful and how we can develop skills using it to achieve mastery in our craft. Examining why so few people embrace the concept, even though the results have been in plain sight for years.  And to share what we discover to enhance our collective success.  I look forward to your participation, and to becoming virtuosos together!