The Checklist Manifesto

Masterful coaching is like dancing with the stars. You have to teach talented executives to do something they are totally unaccustomed to doing. First you have to get people to step out into their Impossible Future. Then you have to get them to shift their weight to the opposite foot and make sure they do what is necessary to keep their day job. Finally, they have to keep practicing this until they can do it with so much style and skill that their performance wows those watching.

What makes this so challenging is the incredible number of demands coming at executives and the level of change and complexity they usually have to deal with. It’s easy, despite good intentions, for something related to their vision or their day job to drop through the cracks.

If this is an issue for you as coach, I suggest picking up a copy of Dr. Atul Gawande’s book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Gawande states that checklists can help anyone both prepare for the future and, at the same time, survive in their day job.

Gawande proves his point through a steady accretion of examples, starting with an Impossible Future at Boeing. In 1935, the company had staked its hopes on the B-17 bomber. However, the bomber crashed on its first test flight because it proved too complex for the skilled test pilot to manage.

The U.S. Army Air Corp ordered planes from Douglas instead, and Boeing nearly went bankrupt. But some test pilots believed in the B-17. They came up with a takeoff checklist to guide a pilot through all the crucial steps to get the plane airborne. Checklists in hand, pilots went on to fly the B-17 for more than 1.8 million miles without an accident. The Army ultimately ordered 13,000 B-17s, giving the U.S. a decisive air advantage in World War II....and pilot checklists became universal.

Gawande examines all manner of disparate tasks—from landing a plane on the Hudson River to building a skyscraper, to operating on patients—to show how checklists can improve outcomes. For example, he explains how a simple five-item checklist in the operating room can dramatically reduce hospital-acquired infections, which kill 99,000 Americans a year.

After reading the book, I was struck by a brilliant flash of the obvious: get each person you are coaching to create one five item checklist that pertains to their Impossible Future and which represents the bold and unreasonable actions that need to be taken in the next 30 days or so. Create another five item checklist that relates to repetitive (routine) tasks of the coachee’s day job.

Gawande says coming up with the right checklist isn’t always easy or obvious, but once you nail that, it’s a very powerful tool. As a coach, offer to be a thinking partner on this and monitor progress regularly.

Dear Mr. Toyoda, It’s a leadership issue.

Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founder, became CEO of the company last June. He spoke of his a vision of becoming the world’s biggest automaker, surpassing Ford and GM, barely mentioning anything about quality. When signs of Toyota’s current crisis began to emerge in his first 100 days, his first reaction was to avoid the spotlight of the media and go into hiding. He sent American CEO Jim Lentz to make apologies. Meanwhile, he let serious product quality issues spiral out of control by understating safety risks and product problems. This left the media, politicians, and consumers to dictate the conversation, while Toyota fumbled the responses. (Subsequently, Mr. Toyoda has agreed to meet with Congress.)

COACHING: Mr. Toyoda, I believe you need to realize that this is a leadership crisis, not a crisis of faulty accelerators. During Chrysler’s 1980’s crisis, CEO Lee Iacocca stepped up to the podium, restoring consumer trust and prosperity. When General Motors emerged from bankruptcy last summer, Chairman Ed Whitacre became the solid, trust inspiring, determined face of the company’s comeback. Mr. Toyoda, you need to show up in the same way—making a human connection with your customers.

How can Akio Toyoda get Toyota back on track? Harvard Professor Bill George has written a book on the seven leadership lessons for leading in a crisis that might be helpful.

1. Take responsibility…starting with yourself. Mr. Toyoda, I believe you should take personal responsibility by saying that you pushed too hard for growth and neglected quality. You should acknowledge that the real problem is not sticking accelerators, stuck floor mats, and panicky drivers, but that the Toyota quality system failed due to the wrong kind of leadership. Your job is to establish “true north” for your company again. Your Teachable Point of View: Toyota must live and die by quality.

2. Forget Atlas Shrugged…get the world off your shoulders. You cannot expect to solve problems of this magnitude yourself. Instead, you need a crisis team reporting directly to you, working 24/7 to get problems fixed—permanently.

3. Get to fundamental causes and solutions. When Toyota’s problems first came up, the company blamed a symptom—exonerating the accelerators and pointing the finger at loose floor mats. Instead, management should have required its best engineers to get to the root cause of this problem and every other quality problem being reported. This is basic engineering and quality discipline.

4. Get ready for a marathon. Mr. Toyoda, the seeds of the crisis your company is now facing were sown over the past ten years by placing growth ahead of customer concerns and quality. Mr. Toyoda, addressing those problems may take another decade to resolve. Toyota must be prepared to accept shrinking sales and slim profits for awhile and invest heavily in corrective action until public confidence is restored.

5. Never waste a good crisis. For all the agony that you and Toyota are experiencing, this crisis provides a powerful opportunity to make fundamental changes required to restore Toyota quality. Employees are ready for new direction and they are willing to make radical changes to renew the company. With your leadership Mr. Toyoda, Toyota automobiles can be restored to the world’s highest quality.

6. You're on center stage. In a crisis, people insist on hearing from the leader. You Mr. Toyoda can’t send out your American CEO or public relations specialists to explain what happened. You must come out of hiding, take personal responsibility, and subject yourself to intense public scrutiny. Then you should make a personal commitment to every Toyota customer to repair the damage, including buying back defective cars.

7. Go on offense; focus on winning now. GM and Ford are rapidly regaining market share, while the confidence of Toyota’s loyal customers is badly shaken. Toyota cannot wait until all its quality problems are resolved. It must play defense and offense at the same time. To win, Toyota needs to offer sublime styling, superior quality, better value for consumers, greater safety, and improved fuel economy. This is a tall order. People are saying that this crisis is a real test Akio Toyoda’s leadership. Are you and Toyota up to these challenges? Just remember, in every breakdown are buried the seeds of a breakthrough.

I want to share a letter I received from Thee Woon Goh, previous participant in the MC Certification Program and now head of Masterful Coaching Asia.

Hi Robert,

To start off I can say that I am thoroughly enjoying my work in executive coaching and consulting. Fortunate for me, my order book is now filled till September this year. I considered myself extremely lucky in securing engagements with three corporations on retainer.

Along the way, I am now acquiring lots of new learning besides sharpening up my old repertoire in organization change, corporate transformation, personal re-invention, leadership development, etc. I’m now into coaching senior executives about “creating the business” for start-ups in large corporations. Thanks to Robert, the term CTB (create the business) is the most powerful concept I am now using. The other powerful concept is “change yourself first.” Several executives talk about having to make changes … making others change. I now “show them the mirror” about changing self first. Encountered occasional tense moments, but I prevailed.

Another thing – Your Coach (In a Book) is an excellent resource that many of my clients enjoy, especially those who were assigned by their companies for coaching as part of leadership development. I get them to do some reading of the book and whenever we meet, we spend about 10 to 15 minutes as part of rapport building to talk about what they have read; and thereafter proceed into our coaching proper. Works marvelously with these Asian executives. Not only do they work on their issues creatively through coaching, they also acquire some new learning.

Thought I should update you about my progress. Regards, Thee Woon

Dear Mr. President, I know you may feel discouraged, but we’re still rooting for you!

There have been three great waves of USA domestic transformation. The first was FDR with the New Deal and the second was LBJ with the Great Society. You represent the Third Wave and have picked up where the others left off—healthcare reform and making America competitive in the global economy.

The issue, Mr. President, is that while people want these reforms, the economic climate at this time is such that they are not ready to pay for them. As a result, your Third Wave has been at least temporarily slowed down or at least flattened out, and with the election of Scott Brown of Massachusetts, you may be feeling pretty discouraged.

Take heart! You still enjoy tremendous personal popularity and I believe you can cause a resurgence of this Third Great Wave, if you keep the following Masterful Coaching TPOV in mind: Anything is possible! There is always a path forward! Every situation is transformable. And the actions are up to you. (Especially this last one.)

1) Anything is possible! You need to continue to hold out the vision of affordable healthcare for all. What American Democrat or Republican can disagree with that?

2) There is always a path forward. You need to create a visceral bond with the American public that change is necessary, and I would start to echo the public’s frustration with the rancor between Democrats and Republicans, and Washington’s bi-partisan gridlock and incompetence.

3) Every situation is transformable. Demonstrate through your own personal behavior several courageous acts of bi partisan political mastery that represent some small steps. For example, call a meeting of the two parties on healthcare and enthusiastically adopting two big ideas the Republicans are championing—frivolous malpractice lawsuits against doctors and lifting a regulatory ban on state experimentation in healthcare.

4) The actions are up to you. Stay focused on small steps that can build rapid momentum. How about passing 20% of your health care bill this year?

It’s my belief that, if you took this coaching to heart, you would not only maintain your popularity, but generate the political and economic will needed to cause a resurgence of this Third Great Wave of Domestic Transformation … and just possibly go down in history as a Great President.

As you may have picked up on from my blogs, I have been having a lot of fun working with people in the Masterful Coaching Certification process. Programs at the Pentagon and at my country house in Waltham Massachusetts have been both impactful and enjoyable.

Following the last session, I received an email from Paul Fisher, one of the participants from a Big Co. His email and my response might give you an idea of what happens in the coaching part of the program. Here Paul is making sure he has met the first test of certification...signing up 2 qualified coachees. (I have changed the names to protect the innocent.)

Paul's letter to Robert... Thank you very much for a great two days. I enjoyed meeting you and appreciate the dialogue associated with the Masterful Coaching methodology. The discussion approach really helped bring my reading of your materials together. I am going back over my notes and the materials to help make connections and reinforce the learning.

I met with Ben, my boss, this morning and we had a really good meeting about my next steps. I am remaining in my current role for now (his choice), which will let me focus on really learning and applying the Masterful Coaching process while I focus all of my efforts on helping him with his organizational objectives.

Ben has agreed to be a client and we discussed several members of his leadership team for coaching engagements. We discussed that this is not intended for “remedial” coaching discussions, but rather for leaders who are focused on accomplishing an “impossible future.”

The leaders on his team that we discussed are ones who have big objectives that they need/want to achieve, as well as ones who are either new to their roles or soon will be and will be in a creative mode with their teams. Any of these leaders will be “Principal (Senior) Managers” and direct reports to Ben.

One in particular stands out to me. He is the new Regional Manager for our Europe/Eurasia operations. He would be keen to engage in the coaching and is definitely focused on accomplishing an “impossible” level vision.

He is located in Aberdeen, Scotland, so I would envision us meeting face-to-face in early March when I will be meeting with him on a separate subject. We would conduct weekly calls for follow-up and focused calls as needed for specific development activities as we progress through the conversations. I would plan to meet personally either every two months or quarterly at a minimum.

Will this combination of clients satisfy the certification requirements of coaching two people with the MC approach, as well as the goals of the coaching?

Perhaps we could schedule a call where I could discuss my plans for the respective clients and my initial meetings with them. Thank you again for the learning, development, and contribution opportunity. Best Regards, Paul

Robert’s response…making sure coachees are on board with an Impossible Future and coaching contract

Paul, This is a great letter as it shows your seriousness about the Masterful Coaching Certification process. I am happy to hear your job situation will allow you to focus on the Masterful Coaching Certification process. I am not clear from your letter whether Ben has signed up for an Impossible Future or rather for help in achieving current organizational objectives. Perhaps you didn’t want to push him to this on the first meeting, but this is a very important point we need to clarify. Everything rests on this.

Also, as you are going to be working closely with Ben, did you have a chance to discuss a Chief of Staff role that we talked about in the context of helping Ben with this Impossible Future and day job? I think this would really empower you and I suggest bringing it up sooner rather than later, as you are still formulating your role.

As far as coaching one of Ben’s high-potential DRs on accelerated leadership development in the context of an Impossible Future, I think that’s a great idea and would meet the requirements of MC Certification, plus be a pre-emptive strike into the staff role. I have done many coaching jobs where I coached an EVP on an Impossible Future and one or two of his VPs. You just have to be two-headed and guarantee confidentiality. This, by the way, is how to get MC to take off in the organization.

Though I usually recommend a meet once a month, talk once a week set up, in cases where you are coaching a guy from a far-flung geographic region, I have myself done the every 2nd month meeting, but ususally with a twice weekly coaching call. It usually works out pretty well, but one note of caution, make sure the guy is a COMMUNICATOR--meetings, phone calls, email.

The key is to know which of the 12 catalytic coaching conversations are best done face-to-face. For example, building an extraordinary coaching relationship, source document and winning game plan, 360 feedback. Other conversations could be doubled up at face-to-face sessions and then reviewed on the phone. Also, you can split the travel-he can come to you or vice versa.

Let’s get the 6 MC Certification calls scheduled near term. I would like to talk to you at the appropriate time to make sure Ben is on board for an Impossible Future and knows something about what that is. I would also like to talk to you about the same with his direct report. Are both willing to sign the coaching contract, which implies 200 hours of coaching (or at least a lot of calendar time)?

Look forward to working with you, Robert