Check Your Decision Making

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

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Topics: Decision Making, Estimating, Leadership, Strategy, ProjectsAtWork

Most checklists are designed to ensure that work is carried out, often in a predefined sequence, with specific steps. Executive-level checklists focus on the thought processes and behaviors that guide strategic decision-making. Let’s explore how and why they can best be leveraged to your organization’s advantage.

Checklists are as commonplace as whiteboards and calendars in the project management world. And whether they are physical or virtual, standalone or integrated into a workflow tool, they can greatly help drive process effectiveness and efficiency. But checklists are typically considered tactical in nature, and most often are associated with frontline operations, not the higher-level decision-making that shapes an organization’s future. That’s a misconception that project management leaders and executives need to reconsider if they aren’t using checklists themselves.

Let’s explore the idea of executive-level checklists through the lens of annual planning and project selection — activities ideally suited to their use. (Here’s a sample checklist that will help frame this discussion: “Benefits Realization Thought Guide”)

First, there is a significant difference between a traditional organizational checklist and the type of executive level checklist that we are considering here. The difference is the behavior that the …

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