Checklists: Get Consensus and Follow Up

Matthew May just finished Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, a book high up on my own reading list. Matt discusses two criteria for checklists:

• Clarity. Assume an untrained eye will read it. Make it bullet-proof, specific, and complete, to capture the knowledge. Make it concrete and representative of the real world. Describe with precision the what, where, and how. That way, there’s no question of what constitutes a deviation or problem.
• Consensus. Everyone who will employ the standard must agree on it. That forces a shared investigation to ensure that the standard represents the best known method or practice at that specific point in time. The activity in turn facilitates understanding.

The consensus part is where most organizations fall short. This is resource intensive. But to get it right, managers must practice genchi genbutsu -- that is, they need to go see for themselves how the work is being done. This takes time and may be perceived as a distraction from "real" work (like putting out fires started because of the lack of good standard processes!).

May suggests three basic steps for deploying a checklist:

1. Establish a Best Practice. Make sure it’s the best-known method. Get input and feedback from those doing the work. Get agreement on it.
2. Make it Visible. Accessibility is key. Hiding it in a drawer won’t work. Post it or publish it so everyone will constantly be aware of it.
3. Communicate. Inform everyone. Prepare and train people. Test it out. Monitor effectiveness and usage.

Step three also takes more time than some managers wish to invest. Training is expensive. It's also difficult to summon the energy after training for follow up. Folks are happy just to be done.

But I'm a huge believer in the power of checklists for lawyers. My experience is that a good checklist pays for itself almost immediately in saved time and reduced errors, sometimes recouping its production costs the first time it is deployed.

D. Mark Jackson

A Seamless Web

Just how wired are we? Here's a personal illustration from San Francisco's Financial District. There's a bus stop across from my office building. But I can get a better seat going home if I walk to an earlier stop about a block away. While waiting for the bus, I usually have five to ten minutes to clean up my email mailbox using my iPhone. Once on the bus, I quickly start up my laptop and launch Outlook. My bus travels around the block and stops in front of the office. By this point, my iPhone has synched with Exchange. And while waiting outside my office, my laptop connects to the office wi-fi and syncs Outlook with Exchange. I head home with my email fully synched, including the work I did at the bus stop.

Of course, I didn't come up with this intentionally. Rather, I only realized it was happening one day as I observed my Outlook synching at the second bus stop.

Okay, this feels like an ostentatious use of technology. And I'll admit I can connect to wireless broadband on my laptop, making this exercise unnecessary. But this experience underscores how connected our urban space really is. It's also one of those rare instances of technology working better than expected. I just have to savor that.

D. Mark Jackson

Capture Clearinghouse

With the explosion of iPhone apps, note taking applications, and digital dictation software, there is (maybe literally) a million ways to capture ideas. Too many. A fundamental principle of GTD is to have a good system for capturing ideas whenever and wherever they occur. You don't have to capture much -- just enough to recall the idea later for full processing.

The problem with having so many capturing tools available is that they scatter your information, when the whole point is to ensure your ideas get timely developed and not lost in the wave of oncoming information.

How do you corral your information if it's spread across separate applications for entering time, recording expenses, managing tasks, and capturing everyday notes?

My solution is to make my Microsoft Outlook inbox the clearinghouse for almost every input. During my daily mailbox reviews, I translate these captured thoughts into projects, transfer information to lists, add to project support material folders, or otherwise appropriately process it.

I recommend making every one of your capturing devices point back to your email inbox. For example:

• Blind copy yourself on emails so you can follow up on assignments (Waiting Fors)

• Email yourself text notes from your handheld

• Use ReQall or Jott to email yourself audio notes

• Use Google Voice to transcribe voicemails and send them to your inbox

• Email yourself URLs from websites for further browsing

• When away from your desk, write a time entry in an email to yourself from your handheld

• Forward emails from other email accounts if they require action

• Email yourself notes from Evernote or other note taking applications, if they require follow up

• Record digital messages and immediately email them to yourself (or use Dragon Dictation to transcribe from your handheld)

Of course, using your Outlook inbox as a clearinghouse makes the most sense if you use Outlook as your list tool. For example, I customize Outlook for managing my projects list, next action lists, and reference lists. If you use some other application to manage your lists, you should make that application your clearinghouse instead.

There's also a few key inputs that don't go directly to my inbox, such as notes on my legal pad. I also collect pieces of paper, such as receipts and business cards, which need follow up. For these items, I make sure to process them during my weekly review.

But for day-to-day capturing, my inbox is it.

D. Mark Jackson

Run Right

Occasionally, this blog will focus on health. This is the first such post. Health is the foundation for everything we do and a prerequisite for improving professionally. Via James Fallows, new running research (subscription required) shows that forefoot striking is biomechanically superior to heel striking.  An interesting video to boot (pun intended, sorry):

Like Fallows, I feel vindicated. After a stress fracture several years ago, I began studying the Pose Method of running, going so far as to hire a certified coach, undergo video analysis, and commit to lots of drill work. Essentially, the technique is to land on your forefoot, with the foot slightly behind your center of gravity, and quickly "pull" your foot off the ground, changing support to the other leg.

I'm a convert. Not only have I been injury free, but I run faster and with much greater ease. And while I usually don a pair of minimalist racing flats, my occasional barefoot run is a unique pleasure.

D. Mark Jackson

Spring Clean Your Mailbox

I'm not immune from Exchange server warnings that my mailbox is approaching the limit. Time to clean it out again.

This is the checklist I follow to get it done:

Mailbox Checklist

I realize some of these folders need an explanation, something I promise to write about soon.

With the exception of the last two items, the list is in ascending order of difficulty and descending order of payoff. That way, I can still get things down to size quickly, even if I don't make it all the way through the list.

I consider this a critical part of my personal 5S program.

On a related note, our technology team thought hard about the appropriate limit for mailbox sizes. If the limit is too low, users end up saving almost everything as a PST. This creates records management and backup issues. And IT should be solving problems, not passing them along to users.

But if the limit is too high, we end up saving too much data on the Exchange server and users feel little pressure to manage their email -- until, that is, it gets really out of hand.

And limits are relative. A heavy email user runs up against the limits sooner.

We decided on 750 MB per user, with warnings beginning at 600 MB.

I get between 100 and 300 email messages daily. I also use Tasks and Calendar extensively. I don't store any documents in my mailbox, except attachments, and I try to keep those kinds of saved messages to a minimum. Keeping my mailbox below 600 MB feels about right, and a well organized mailbox runs around 300 MB to 400 MB. Although I regularly manage my inbox, the upper limit provides some incentive to clean out less frequently used folders, such as my junk e-mail folder and rule storage folders.

It's actually helpful to have this reminder that storage isn't infinite (yet).

D. Mark Jackson

Free Your Mind (and the rest will follow)

David Allen recently wrote (no link available):

I'm lazy and I don't want to think about anything more than it deserves. So my quest became to find the best and most efficient ways to think about things as little as possible. What I found was that by asking a few clarifying questions, and putting the answers in a trusted system, I was able to use my mind more creatively and more strategically for the kind of stuff that really did deserve my mental horsepower.

Using a good system for capturing standard processes allows you to delegate routine thinking to your system, thus freeing up your mind for hard thinking. Contrary to popular belief, a good organizational system enhances creativity.

Most people use a calendar this way. They put appointments and deadlines on their schedule, rather than trying to keep it all in their head. Instead of thinking about when a meeting is scheduled, for example, they focus on preparing for the meeting, or doing something else entirely. By getting the basic information about their schedule on the calendar, it frees them up to think about more important things.

But most people don't appreciate that this method works just as well with tasks. By taking the list of next actions out of your head -- which is usually an impossible thing to keep in your head anyway -- you free up mental RAM for something else. This is particularly true with routine and standardized tasks, which may require little mental energy to do, but tremendous mental energy to keep straight in your head.

And getting tasks into your system minimizes waste. Managing tasks mentally adds little value, and does so at the expense of higher value thinking.  It's like searching for a tool versus using the tool to make something.

D. Mark Jackson

The Future of Legal Education: Online?

Ralph Losey persuasively argues that online education will replace bricks-and-mortor education, including law school, as the dominant form. The major advantage of online courses, he claims, is that they are asynchronous, meaning:

A student can logon to study at the time when they are most alert and receptive. They can do so in an environment of their choosing, one that they have found to be most conducive for learning. They may choose to study alone, or in a group.  Some may learn best in a crowded coffee-shop. Others may prefer a quiet room by themselves. For some the preferred time to learn may be in the morning. For others it may be late at night. Online learning can happen anywhere and anytime.

Traditional institutions that ignore this trend -- even our most venerable top universities -- risk being left behind.

This resonates with me. I studied for the California Bar exam while living in Virginia, entitling me to use the study course's audio tapes, rather than having to attend the live lectures.

Granted, it was the bar exam, but it was one of the most intense learning experiences in my life. Since I devoted my days entirely to bar preparation, I could plan all my activities around my personal preferences and natural rhythms. For me, this meant taking practice tests in the morning, studying outlines in the morning and early afternoon, and listening to the lectures in the late afternoon when I didn't have the energy to do much else. I could listen lying down on the sofa when particularly exhausted. I could take breaks at will. I could clear my head with a run. This freedom allowed me to absorb a huge amount of material in the most personally effective way.

This wouldn't work for everyone. Some people need that mandatory lecture in order get on task in the morning. One can't really do class projects and study groups without personal interaction. People learn differently through dialogue. And how do you do the Socratic method in a WebEx session?

But let's leave aside whether this education is better, in the sense of being more convenient, cost effective, and otherwise efficient.  Will online education make for better lawyers?  Or will something essential be lost in translation?

D. Mark Jackson

Don't E-Disagree

Here's what Don Lents, chairman of Bryan Cave, has to say about electronic communications versus business travel:

“You should never engage in a disagreement electronically,” Mr. Lents said he advises [lawyers at his firm]. “If you are going to disagree with somebody, you certainly don’t want to do it by e-mail, and if possible you don’t even want to do it by phone. You want to do it face to face.”

...

“That’s an important message that does not necessarily come naturally to a lot of younger people today who have grown up with so much of their communications being by texting and e-mail,” he said. “I tell our younger lawyers, if you think you are going to have a difficult interaction with a colleague or a client, if you can do it face to face that’s better, because you can read the body language and other social signals.”

“In texting and e-mails or even videoconferencing, you can’t always gauge the reaction and sometimes things can have a tendency to be misunderstood, or they can ratchet up to a level of seriousness that you didn’t anticipate,” he added. “In person, you see that somebody reacting in a way that you didn’t expect. Then you can stop and figure out what’s going on, and adapt.”

Genchi genbutsu in action. Human interaction is so complex and dependent on subtle cues. Especially when two people disagree. I can't think of a context where it is more important to go see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation.

D. Mark Jackson

Email Poka Yoke

Judge Gerald Lebovits has an excellent article on email for lawyers in the New York State Bar Association Journal. It's comprehensive. My favorite tip is this:

Fill in the address box only when you’re ready to send. The ease of sending out mass e-mail, purposely or inadvertently, means that you must take care when addressing your message. To avoid sending an e-mail before you’re ready, write your entire e-mail, do all your edits, and proofread before you fill in the address box.

This is a nice example of poka yoke.  The process helps the writer to stop and think, minimizing potential errors when composing the body of the message. It also clears the mind before selecting the recipient, making it more likely to be the correct choice between sometimes similar contacts.  And for lawyers, this can be a critical choice, to wit.

In addition, I frequently add my signature to an email only after completely editing it, especially important correspondence. It forces me to be sure I really want to associate my name with what I wrote.

D. Mark Jackson

K.I.S.S. (Keep it Simple Software)

I had an enjoyable conversation today with a trusts and estates lawyer. She is very good about generating regular email newsletters for her clients, and I was curious about the application she uses. I was somewhat interested in the product myself -- it had a lot of appealing features. Not only did it have extensive email functions, it included a customer relations management tool and some interesting database features.

To my surprise, this attorney hated it.

She described spending many hours trying to learn all the complicated features and still needed to invest additional time to get the desired results. She was set to "downgrade" to a product with fewer features.

I think a lot of lawyers can recount similar experiences, especially those willing to experiment with new technology. They waste a lot of time learning how the tool works, only to discover that it works poorly or does a lot of stuff they don't need it to do. They discover the product is feature rich, but the features are incomplete and awkwardly executed. And, of course, each new feature entails potential conflicts and bugs.

The converse also seems true. Simple but well executed applications are a joy. Elegant solutions are satisfying.

When I got the iPhone, for example, I initially was disappointed by the inability to customize. And, when compared to my BlackBerry, certain features seemed to be missing. Over time, however, the missing features have translated into improved usability, flatter learning curves -- and frankly, fun. What I really need is included and done well.  As a result, I'm more efficient and less frustrated.

Heavy technology users want to customize applications and they reflexively search for new features. We think of customization as a way to better match the application to our idiosyncrasies. We want features to maximize utility. But in reality, this isn't about optimization. Usually we customize and employ features just to make applications work, as compensation for poor design.

Technology consumers should resist their initial impulses -- our instincts have been mistrained. Forget about the nifty features. Find something simple that actually works.

D. Mark Jackson

Barbarians at the Gate

Earlier today, U.S. Director of Intelligence Dennis Blair put "cyberattacks" at the top of his prepared remarks to the Senate:

The threat of a crippling attack on computer and telecommunications networks is growing, America’s top intelligence official told lawmakers on Tuesday, as an increasingly sophisticated group of enemies has “severely threatened” the sometimes fragile systems undergirding the country’s information systems.

. . . .

“Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication,” he said.

The decision by Mr. Blair to begin his annual testimony before Congress with the cyber threat points up the concerns among American intelligence officials about the potentially devastating consequences of a coordinated attack on the nation’s technology apparatus, sometimes called a “Cyber Pearl Harbor.”

I have no special insight on this issue, other than to note that lawyers are not immune.  Indeed, lawyers may be especially vulnerable, given the increasingly collaborative nature of law practice, the large amount of sensitive data for which we are responsible, and our increasing dependence on network connectivity.   My (rather safe) prediction is that security will demand an increasingly large chunk of law firm IT budgets.

D. Mark Jackson

It's the Network, Stupid

It's official in my book.  At least for the near future, network performance is the limiting reagent for computing:

"Carrier networks aren’t set to handle five million tablets sucking down 5 gigabytes of data each month,” Philip Cusick, an analyst at Macquarie Securities, said.

Wireless carriers have drastically underestimated the network demand by consumers, which has been driven largely by the iPhone and its applications, he said. “It’s only going to get worse as streaming video gets more prevalent.”

An hour of browsing the Web on a mobile phone consumes roughly 40 megabytes of data. Streaming tunes on an Internet radio station like Pandora draws down 60 megabytes each hour. Watching a grainy YouTube video for the same period of time causes the data consumption to nearly triple. And watching a live concert or a sports event will consume close to 300 megabytes an hour.

Debates over the 16 nm node barrier and other theoretical limits of Moore's Law are certainly more interesting.  But in terms of what really constrains our ability to use technology, I think network issues will predominate.

Most people I know are reasonably happy with the speed of their computing devices, especially with newer devices.  But who doesn't wish for faster connectivity?

It's interesting how the size of operating systems are leveling off, or even getting smaller, and virtualization is helping to maximizing existing infrastructure.  Homegrown processing power is a sideshow.  The network is the main event.  Witness the rise of web apps, cloud computing, internet media, gaming, and an increasingly mobile or remotely-based workforce.  The trends don't bode well.

I'm not sure why industry was unprepared for this.  It's not as if these trends were unforeseeable. How we solve this emerging problem should be interesting.

D. Mark Jackson

Pad to the Future

In case you need a break from brainstorming justifications for buying an iPad, let's look forward.  My engineering colleague passes along a future interface.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

Admittedly very cool. Still, seems like a lot of trouble and only marginally better than Alt-Tab and a mouse or The Dock.  And nothing yet beats a keyboard for converting language based ideas into digitally usable form (i.e. some form of text). This, of course, seems to be the biggest weakness to the iPad interface. And who -- really -- needs more than 10 windows open at a time?  All those open windows reminds me of this classic from The Onion.

I'm thinking the real future is when we do away with screens altogether and start using glasses and "heads up" displays.  And neural interfaces!

D. Mark Jackson

Non-Stop Computing

This New York Times article is rather shocking:

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones.

And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.

In just thinking about the numbers, this is hard for me even to comprehend.  That's a lot of time.

Equally disturbing is how the devices are being used. It's consumption driven. While I spend a great deal of time using digital devices, it's primarily for productivity, learning, and communication. The entertainment potential for my devices is greatly underutilized.  And when I'm not working, I'm reluctant to use a digital device, which can stand in the way of potential human interaction.

As an adult -- and one born well before the age of ubiquitous computing --  I appreciate the risks of spending too much time with machines and not enough time with people. Young developing minds, however, may lack the experience and context to make such judgments.

Every generation tends to be pessimistic about the next generation. I try not to fall into that trap. But, at the very least, this phenomenon is worrisome and certainly unprecedented.

D. Mark Jackson