Credit insurance brokers improve performance and results by using yesterday’s progress as the zero point and aiming higher each day
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 11:04AM By Rob Downey
Commercial airline passengers benefit everyday from flight crews who, by law, tradition and training, follow pre-flight checklists. My view is that the use of checklists to maintain high standards in the performance of important recurring team tasks should be studied in business schools. What has this got to do with trade credit insurance, trade finance and the management of political risks? ICBA USA uses a wide variety of lists in our global brokerage business to assist, educate, and guide ourselves as well as our global credit-insured clientele.
One of the most recent and striking confirmations of the efficacy of using lists as touchstones to guide high performance comes from the medical profession. In case you have not heard it, I synopsize below the story of how empowered nurses armed with checklists in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Johns Hopkins Medical Center managed to dramatically improve patient outcomes at what was already one of the world’s finest hospitals.