The Beauty of Checklists
Airwolfhound
In 1935 Boeing developed the Model 299, their next-generation long range bomber. On 28th July it took off for its maiden flight from Boeing Field, Seattle, and their Chief Test Pilot Les Tower flew it successfully for one-and-a-half hours.
Over the next three months it made many more test flights.
Then on one late October day at Wright Airfield in Dayton Ohio, it was demonstrated to the US Army Air Corps. The pilot was Major Ployer ‘Pete’ Hill, the chief of flight testing for the Air Corps, with Les Tower as part of the crew. He taxied the massive 100-foot-plus wingspan bomber to the runway, and opened up the engines. It lifted off with a thunderous sound, climbed to several hundred feet, but within seconds stalled, banked and fell to earth, resulting in an explosion which killed two of the five crew members, including Major Hill.
What had happened? Major Hill was an incredibly experienced pilot. The crash investigation reported that there was no mechanical failure, the plane was in perfect condition. What the investigation found was that the flight crew had simply forgotten to release the flight control gust locks, which caused the plane to nosedive.
A simple oversight. What contributed was that the plane was too complex, it was too easy to overlook or forget necessary steps.
And thus the checklist was born. In fact, on the anniversary of the crash, 30th October is national checklist day - pop the date in your diary.
With a checklist, a complex plane became far safer; and the Model 299 entered service in 1937 as the Flying Fortress. It was the third most produced bomber of all time.
Checklists are now everywhere. They are ubiquitous in aviation, but are vital in areas such as medicine too. In 2014, delivering the BBC Reith Lectures, Dr Atul Gawande talked about the future of medicine, and he applauded the contribution of the checklist to the systemisation of medicine. As part of his own research he devised a simple surgical checklist which reduced complications by 36% and cut deaths in half.
You’ll have gathered that I like checklists.
Lives might not depend on it, but checklists can help us with pricing too.
Sometimes trying to figure out what you should charge is a bit like trying to find an answer to the old chestnut - ‘how long is a piece of string?’.
The simple approaches are to add a margin onto your costs or to look at what the competition is charging. But there are problems with this. Perhaps it’s hard to find out competitor prices. Maybe you provide a better service than your competitors, and feel that you should be able to charge more for the value you deliver. But how do you assess that value?
You can start with a blank sheet of paper. Or you can build a checklist so that you’re not starting from scratch each time.
For example, you might consider:
What are the financial benefits for the customer? This might include costs saved, increased sales, better margin, faster conversion, improved cashflow.
What are the non-financial things which will create value? Perhaps your customer will feel better about themselves, or gain a promotion, or get a sense of price whenever they use your product.
What are the answers to three questions - why us, why now, why solve the problem this way?
What are the customer’s pain points? Your product or service might make a specific part of their lives easier, allow them to do something quicker, or something else.
The point is that over time you can build a better and better list, and once you have one, you will be in a far stronger position to establish the value you are delivering and therefore the price you can charge.
And once you’ve figured out what value means for your customers, you’ll be one step closer to knowing how long that string is.