In the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey described the frantic sense of loss he felt when the things were not in order.

He had a number of papers laid out, chapter by chapter, on a table in a room when suddenly, the breeze picked up and blew his papers about. Frantically, he rushed around the room, trying desperately to put them back. Finally, he realised that it would be more effective to take ten seconds and close one of the windows in the room.

When working on urgent transactions, most of us tend to react similarly.

Our instinct is dive straight in to get the things done, which often leads us overlook crucial in the rush.

A more effective approach would be to take a step back and list out the steps. If you work on certain transactions regularly, fine tune your checklists and systems as you go along.

I’m a fan of Atul Gawande’s book, “The Checklist: How to Get Things Right”. The stories in the book about how surgeons, pilots, fund investors and architects use checklists to improve their outcomes are fascinating to me.

Checklists free up some mental bandwidth. The following passage from the book exemplifies this:

“The fear people have about the idea of adherence to protocol is rigidity. They imagine mindless automatons, heads down in a checklist, incapable of looking out their windshield and coping with the real world in front of them. But what you find, when a checklist is well made, is exactly the opposite. The checklist gets the dumb stuff out of the way, the routines your brain shouldn’t have to occupy itself with (Are the elevator controls set? Did the patient get her antibiotics on time? Did the managers sell all their shares? Is everyone on the same page here?), and lets it rise above to focus on the hard stuff (Where should we land?).”

Before I commence the review or drafting of a legal document, I always make a checklist outlining the issues I intend to check or address within the document. This ensures I do not miss out anything, especially if I get interrupted in the midst of the task. I find checklists particularly useful when I work with a team and I need to co-ordinate various parts of a corporate transaction.

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This post was posted on LinkedIn on 14 December 2023.