How to SHOW the importance of checklists, through some team gaming or play?

[rogerpenna]

Hope my topic fits here on TRAINING.

My company has an annual "QUALITY Day", where we usually have some team buildings games, some talks, coffee break and some comedy show for the employees

We recently decided we would scrap the external shows, and focus on gaming... specially, try to have a few team games that would be about current issues on the company... helping people understand the work of other areas, do some daily activities in a more gamified manner, etc.

One issue we are having is that of checklists. It seems quite a few employees don´t see value in them, they think from experience they know the job, that checklists are bureaucratic... some checklists have been filled with a single continuous line crossing all boxes. When questioned, said employee said he forgot to checkmark the boxes, so he just added the line later. We suspect that not even that... he was probably NOT using the checklist and just filling it later (and wrongly, so that's why he got caught).

But how many others are doing the same, but correctly checking the boxes, so they don´t get caught?

And it seems that just TELLING the importance of checklists enters through one year and out throught the other, without they really listening to it.

Thus, I want to GAMIFY this learning about the importance of checklists. A game that can show the limitations of human attention and memory (so they will be less cocky about themselves) and how checklists can help with that.

Unfortunatelly, had no help with Google. I only get results about CHECKLISTS FOR GAMING or FOR TRAINING, but no "TRAINING FOR CHECKLISTS".

Anyone here with any experience on this? Or any ideas you might share? Thanks a lot.

 

[mattador78]

Probably best to create your own with a relevance to what people are interested in I suppose it could be a bit D&D in style or choose your own adventure type. A not so funny story in relation to checklists is about the former SAS soldier Andy McNab who while being tortured by the Iraqis in the first gulf war decided to copy his comrade in there with him who was building a house in his head to cope with the torture, problem was Andy finished his house in the first couple of hours whilst his mate who had been a builder previously was still going through his checklists of materials and permits for the first couple of days

 

[Marc]

If it was me, I'd show 2 or 3 "Air Crash Investigations" episodes.

Probably best to create your own with a relevance to what people are interested in

Yup - I agree.

 

[rogerpenna]

Not sure this little story is about the benefits of checklists (allowed the soldier who used checklist to cope wiith torture) or about checklists being too bureaucratic.

I think it really shows how complex a house is... and while they were doing it mentally, we can imagine that if it was a real case, the first guy would NOT finish his house first, quite the inverse.

Just the fact he forgot the permits would cause delays and fines, and the lack of materials would mean stops all the time to go buy such materials and transport them everytime he remembered about one.

 

[Jean_B]

I don't know of any ready games, but for the issue you are facing the magic is in the handover. Imagine giving everybody a/some puzzle pieces and people can only put in their own. If at the end someone didn't put theirs in at the right spot/time, the puzzle would be incomplete.

For personal checklists intended to prevent lapses of memory or actions, have a blind experiment going on for a longer period, where the blind side can be used to show how far off they were. Perhaps use a song which they must pause within 30 to 60 seconds of (re-)starting, and must then reset the starting point to be where they left off. Easy to do if you have a checklist, damn hard without. Note the actual start and pause/end times down yourself and edit the music so it plays continuously in the way they started and stopped it. Immediately apparent to nearly everyone what the value can be in a checklist.

For completion, just give them a time limit (let's not pretend people are not under pressure to deliver quantity) and a borderline amount of items (mixing recipes might be ideal, e.g. cake) to get from a shop. You must get them all, you must get the right brand, you must get the right amount, and that has to be in time. People might still be missing some at the end time, but the ones who kept a tidy checklist know they are missing some and wouldn't need to return to the shop to get that ingredient and waste a lot of time, they would waste a little bit more than allowed but leave with everything to bake it.

 

[rogerpenna]

There is a 5S training material which consists of a slide showing lots of tools spread around the screen.
Then there is a screen with something written like "Which tool is missing?" and the same photo of the tools, with a single one missing.

And nobody can discover which one was missing.

Then there is another slide showing a tool panels with the tool shadows, and one of the shadows has no tool over it, then the slide asks: "what tool is missing?"


I think that was a great example of the importance of the SET IN ORDER part of 5S, and I was able to gamify that once, with teams having a time to find out what tool was missing in both examples (in second example ALL teams always scored, but that is exactly the point of the exercise)

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I was thinking of having maybe two trucks and some other heavy machine (like a motorgrader) on the patio. We would put small post-its indicating problems (like a leak) in parts of the truck.

The team would indicate a member to be the main player.

We would then track how much time one of the members would take to find all the "problems" (the post its).


Then they go to the other truck and the play is similar, but this time with a checklist. We then track the time taken to complete the task.

Notice that time AND finding all problems count. Maybe each problem missed will add like 15-30 seconds to the total time?

Then the same thing with the motorgrader, with another team member?

 

[Eredhel]

Are people performing their jobs well, if not how much out are their performances?

 

[rogerpenna]

I don't know of any ready games, but for the issue you are facing the magic is in the handover. Imagine giving everybody a/some puzzle pieces and people can only put in their own. If at the end someone didn't put theirs in at the right spot/time, the puzzle would be incomplete.

That is interesting, but I am trying to imagine how the puzzle wold be time-dependent and how to show the difference between with and without checklists.
__

For personal checklists intended to prevent lapses of memory or actions, have a blind experiment going on for a longer period, where the blind side can be used to show how far off they were. Perhaps use a song which they must pause within 30 to 60 seconds of (re-)starting, and must then reset the starting point to be where they left off. Easy to do if you have a checklist, damn hard without. Note the actual start and pause/end times down yourself and edit the music so it plays continuously in the way they started and stopped it. Immediately apparent to nearly everyone what the value can be in a checklist.

Ok, I am trying to understand what you imagined here.

I suppose you mean someone not in a team is controlling the music player (in a computer for example. This person starts playing music.
Who decides when the song will be paused? The "blind" person, or the person controlling the song?

Ok, the song is paused (suppose I annotate in a sheet that it was paused at 00:27)

The blind person then must re-start the song? How? By listening to all of it again and deciding WHERE it was stopped before? In that case, each time the song is stopped, it's restarted from the very beginning?By just telling the "song operator" the second it was stopped before?

For completion, just give them a time limit (let's not pretend people are not under pressure to deliver quantity) and a borderline amount of items (mixing recipes might be ideal, e.g. cake) to get from a shop. You must get them all, you must get the right brand, you must get the right amount, and that has to be in time. People might still be missing some at the end time, but the ones who kept a tidy checklist know they are missing some and wouldn't need to return to the shop to get that ingredient and waste a lot of time, they would waste a little bit more than allowed but leave with everything to bake it.

That is interesting. Items missing or too many of an item could be added to total time, simulating having to return to the store. Maybe run it a few times (different recipes) with different team members and average total with and without checklists. Just to remove outliers who may have very good memory or luck (accidentally getting the right amount and right items)

 

[rogerpenna]

Are people performing their jobs well, if not how much out are their performances?

our main problem is with trucks and heavy machinery (motorgrades, bulldozers, excavators) maintenance.

drivers and operators should check several items BEFORE starting using the equipment at any day.

unlike in a factory, this kind of equipment finds different conditions and workloads every single day. So while there is preventive maintenance based on hours operated, find little faults BEFORE starting the workday, then calling maintenance team, can reduce problems, or the size of problems.

also, unlike in a factory, our equipment is mobile and is in different places every time, while maintenance is based on HQ. (doing preventive based on hours and corrective). So maintenance cannot every single day check all 100 different machines/trucks spread over an area of 100km radius around HQ.

It's hard to know exactly what problems came from not properly following the checklist. Even when following it, problems may still happen at the field.
But we have indications of several problems that PROBABLY would have been found by a proper checklist following, before they became worse problems.

 

[Scanton]

I have always used something like the Pre and Post-Op Heart Surgery Operating Instrument Set Checklist (attached), to highlight the importance of checklists, after all, who wants something left in them after surgery? I also state that the employees who complete these checklists are not the highly qualified surgeons, they are just ordinary people like you and me. I know that statement my not be 100% accurate in all instances however most of the time the people sterilising the equipment are responsible for the first count.