Wednesday in the Woods · episode 013
Checklist or Wrecklist? Does naughty or nice suffice?
3:24youtube · Licensio, LLC
description
I was really hoping to bring you a video this week, but a farm elf jumped the fence and I spent all solstice looking for him. Reminds me of the time, nearly 20 years ago, when I had to shake out my /boot partition looking for ELF files when the x86 Linux kernel first switched. Like real elves, their compressed size often helps them slip through the cracks.
Anyway, I never did find the elf, but he did send us a video as he escaped on a farm vehicle. It’s a short one, but he seems to be trying to impart some wisdom related to checklists. For us, checklists normally come up in situations like software releases, audits, or M&A diligence. In these situations, things like QA processes or controls in ISO27001 naturally lend themselves to bulleted lists and spreadsheets.
But, as the elf implores us, it’s important to balance these checklists with a healthy dose of common sense and gut instinct. Checklists are great at helping ensure that we don’t forget something or follow the wrong sequence, but they aren’t a guarantee that you’ve done a good job.
Think about it like the difference between “necessary” and “sufficient” in #logic or #math.
Necessary is something that you have to do in order to “do a good job.” If you skip it, you’re setting yourself up for failure. For example, if you’re going to bake some bread, you’ve got to have some kind of flour.
But in order to produce a good outcome, you need to focus on more than just necessary - you need to focus on sufficient. Sufficient is about what actually - big picture, holistically - creates what you want to happen.
Thinking about sufficiency helps us think backwards from desired state to current state. It helps us identify unknowns that were unconsidered. It helps us connect related or contextual knowledge that wasn’t contemplated when an abstract list was constructed. And often, it helps us think creatively about solving the problem instead of simply repeating the past.
My check list now includes shutting the gate and making sure the elf fencing is hot before closing up for the night. And I think I’ll pick up a higher-resolution infrared drone to help track the strays down. My old Parrot doesn’t quite have the FLIR detail to pick up the little guy as he flew off.
Hope you all enjoyed the solstice and whatever else you may be celebrating this year. Stay warm and stay healthy!
#checklists #risk #riskmanagement #compliance #audit #diligence #qa #linux #elf #winter #holidays #happyholidays #merrychristmas #xmas
transcript
~303 words · showhide
from the human-edited captions published with the video. timestamps jump to that point in the video.
- 0:21
[strangely-shaped elf approaches carrying a present]
- 0:35
Good morning. Welcome to this festive episode of Wednesday in the Woods. You know, it's the Winter Solstice today and I was stopped by the workshop picking up a few little gifts here for people who are good, and I got to thinking about how, in years past, I would have pulled out my checklist, you know, written down who is naughty or nice, just like a risk register. And then, I would have followed a simple checklist to determine who gets a present or not.
- 1:09
But you know, as I've grown, and as I've matured, as this organization has taken on a little bit more holistic approach to good and bad, I think I have, you know, got a little bit less need for the old-fashioned checklist These days, I like to take a broader view of who's been good or bad and you know, things can change over time, there's many dimensions to good or bad ,and simple procedural approaches like checklists can be an important part of making sure we don't miss anything when we go 'round and figure out who's been naughty and nice, but it's always important to step back for a minute and not to fall into the trap of following a checklist to the exclusion of other common sense or basic instincts.
- 1:58
And so, this holiday season, regardless of whether you celebrate risk registers or Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever, then think about who's been naughty and nice, what's been good or bad, in a little bit more of a broad sense, not just a checklist. Don't forget your check lists, but don't rely on to the exclusion of everything else. Speaking of which, I think I forgot to check on that last elf. I'll be back in a minute.