What do emergency room physicians, airline pilots, and kindergarten classes all have in common? They all use checklists to make sure they’re doing the right things at the right time. While they’re not sexy or fashionable, checklists are the backbone of many a successful business. Here are some ways checklists can help entrepreneurs keep their businesses running smoothly and productively:

• Checklists provide a guideline for outsourcing or delegating.
  Want to outsource slideshow creation to a contractor? Send them the details with your “slideshow creation” checklist, and they’ll know exactly what you want them to do, in order.
• Checklists make it easy to replicate best practices.
  Once you’ve pinpointed the exact way to create killer sales pages, you can document that and do it over and over again. Brilliance!
• Checklists save time by eliminating the “what’s next?” stage.
  You know when you finish one thing and have to stop and think, “What the do I do next?” Or “What did I forget?” Well, with a good checklist you won’t have to do that anymore. You’ll know.
• Checklists ensure that everyone is on the same page.
  When you’re collaborating with partners, assistants or virtual assistants, it’s easy to lose sight of who’s responsible for what and when. Checklists make it easy to assign tasks and remind yourself the proper order of execution.

Not all checklists are created equal, though. Research has shown there are a few key ingredients for making good checklists:

1. Keep it to one page. Longer checklists are intimidating and make it easy for people to get lost. Or they’ll avoid using the checklist because it’s just too darned long.
2. Be specific. Especially if you’re outsourcing or delegating, you have to leave no room for ambiguity.
3. Test it out. Once you’ve created what you think is a great checklist, give it a go. See if you’ve left anything out or put too much in. Then refine it and test it again.
4. Have someone else test it. Of course, you know what you mean by “add graphic to web page,” but will someone else? Give it to someone else to test and see what they come up with, where they get stuck, and what works well.
5. Use it! Checklists don’t do any good if they’re languishing on your hard drive. Use them – and if you find yourself NOT using them, ask why. Is it too complex? Too self-explanatory? Too simple? Then use that information to create a better checklist.

While checklists won’t solve all of your productivity issues, they are a fantastic way to simplify complex information and provide guidance for outsourcing. They can be a bit time-intensive to create, but the time that you’ll save on the back end will be well worth the effort.

Technorati Tags: efficient business, Time Management, virtual assistant