Accountability accounts for success.

Though checklists can be overdone, there are times when checklists are warranted and ought to be enforced until such times as actions become habitual, or processes fully automated. But the notion of checklists ought not to stop with mere acctivities. At some point early in the transition process to the new changes checklists ought to evolve into scorecards and people held accountable to achieving various “success indices”.

If the change is a major one, then face-to-face meetings should take place as frequently as necessary to review progress and especially contributions. This should include sending “checkup” or auditing teams into the field to visit various regions and to host face-to-face meetings there. Those teams, each review, ought to be seeking to uncover actions that are succeeding and actions that amount to ineffective use of one’s time.

Scorecards, reviews and process audits can accelerate the pace of positive change by REPLICATING EARLY that which works and by REDUCING EARLY that which does not work.

Another benefit of these checkups can be the revelation of having too many resources committed to a particular task or process. Sometimes too much is as bad as too little. If too many people are involved there may be confusion of responsibilities, duplication of outputs, etc.

Checkups ensure the correct concentration of resources and minimization of waste.