AUA: When Do Checklists Turn Into Compliance Theater?
About this episode:
Original Air Date: July 20, 2026Every org has process that started as protection and calcified into performance: boxes we check to prove nothing bad happened, rather than to help good work happen.
In this mini episode, Rodney and Sam respond to a listener trying to resist the "checklistification" of their org. They draw a line where good checklists turn bad and explore the limits for what checklists can—and can't—solve in your team's Twilight Zone.
Mentioned in this episode:
“Sunshine and Twilight Zones”: The Ready’s Depthfinding framework
Atul Hawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto
In this episode:
Rodney Evans
Sam Spurlin
Listen now:
Episode transcript:
Rodney Evans:
Hey y'all. Welcome back to At Work with The Ready. I'm Rodney Evans and that guy is my friend Sam Spurlin.
Sam Spurlin:
Hello everyone and hello especially to you, Rodney.
Rodney Evans:
Thanks Sam. Every other week we tackle one tough though-provoking listener question and give you a few ideas that we hope are helpful. So let's dive in. Sam, what do you have for us this week?
Sam Spurlin:
This week's question is how do we go about building a workplace that supports and protects the positive proven methods for doing good work while avoiding checklistification, which I appreciate that word checklistification. I think the person is using it in the sense of kind of checklists and what they call compliance brain. We're putting a process in place just to make sure nothing bad ever, ever happens.
Rodney Evans:
Yeah. In the original question, the person also mentioned the tension between the Sunshine Zone and the Twilight Zone. And I am going to get to that because you're pointing to something that only the real heads will actually probably pick up on. But just to crack open the creme brulee, I would first start by questioning the premise of whether checklistification is inherently bad. So I love checklists.
Sam Spurlin:
Atul Gawande would tell you checklists are great. Checklist Manifesto author?
Rodney Evans:
I don't know who that is.
Sam Spurlin:
Okay. It's a great book.
Rodney Evans:
Okay, great. I love checklists as particularly defaults. There's a reason that commercial airline pilots have a checklist that they go through. When we open a deal at The Ready, Notion auto-populates a project steward checklist of things to do. I have a default packing checklist because I'm tired of forgetting my fucking medication. I wouldn't necessarily vilify the checklist or the checklistification of work on its face. I think where it goes wrong is that we're doing things on the checklist that are either are not valuable or we're only doing things on the checklist to show someone else that they're done. But having a checklist of the default shit that always has to be done, like finishing your expenses and entering your shit into the client invoice schedule and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah every month so that our books are clean at The Ready, that's not bad.
And the great thing is done well, nobody has to check the checklist because the checklist is the accountability mechanism and we use it to hold ourselves accountable so that we don't have to be compliant to someone else. We just have to be compliant to the activities that are required to do something.
Sam Spurlin:
Yeah. The whole checklist thing makes me think about complicated versus complex. Complicated problems really benefit from checklists. You can break down a complicated problem into a series of steps, which are great for a checklist. And you may be expecting me to say complex problems are not good for checklists. And I was going to say that, but I just had a thought, which is I think there's still a version of checklists that can be useful in a more complex space, which is not like, "Hey, did you take this step?" But it's like, "Have you though about it in this way yet? Have you thought about the problem through this lens? Have you thought about it through this lens?" And using a checklist to be somewhat systematic about trying to sense make around a complex problem I think is a great use of a checklist.
Rodney Evans:
I love that. You gave me an idea, which is like take my packing checklist as a very good example of what you're talking about. The bad way to do that would be like I went somewhere and it rained and now on my packing checklist forever is a raincoat because nine times out of 10, I'm not bringing a raincoat. And travel is inherently complex. There are a lot of factors beyond our control, et cetera. So my checklist is all of the things that I always need, like my medicine and a toothbrush and pants, but there is a section-
Sam Spurlin:
The big three, as we call them.
Rodney Evans:
—The travel trifecta, if you will. But there is a sort of other section that has something on it literally that says weather question mark, which to your point is like, "Hey dumb dumb, did you think about whether you need..." And then it's like, "Oh, I need sunscreen. Oh, I need a rain jacket. Oh, I need a hat and gloves." But I don't add all of that stuff to the checklist. I just have some prompts for the complexity factors of travel, like passports and adapters. There is a thing there that's like "International?" and then that is other stuff. So I love the framing because I do think that there's a way to not try to checklist your way into complexity but still have it be incredibly useful.
Sam Spurlin:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So the other part of this question, which is more in the context, she was asking us about an inherent tension between Twilight Zone and Sunshine Zone in the example of asynchronous ways of working. So you could interpret making things visible and transparent is kind of taking things from the Twilight Zone and moving them up into the Sunshine Zone. And is there kind of an inherent tension there with requiring people to make things show up in the Sunshine Zone? So I'm curious how you're thinking about that.
Rodney Evans:
Yeah. I mean, this is where it's a very fair question and actually one that I've asked myself because the Twilight Zone and the Sunshine Zone are not totally MECE. I talk about Sunshine-
Sam Spurlin:
Mutually Exclusive-
Rodney Evans:
Completely Exhaustive.
Sam Spurlin:
Exhaustive. Yeah.
Rodney Evans:
—I talk about the Sunshine Zone as the sort of static assets used to understand an organization. I probably wouldn't put something like a checklist into that category. I think of it more as your org chart, your strategy deck, your vision statement. Sort of like the big dogs. If I was entering your team and you were like, "Here's the checklist that we always use," that could be a Sunshine Zone asset, but also checklists are a way of working. And my prompt on the Twilight Zone is often like, if I were watching a movie of you doing your job, what would I see? And something I might see is you pulling up a checklist and going through to make sure that you did all of the defaults correctly. So I probably wouldn't get too hung up about where it belongs because again, the idea here is, is the Twilight Zone way of working fit for what you are trying to do, the aims and measures of the Sunshine Zone?
If in the Sunshine Zone, for example, you have a specific retention metric, there might be a Twilight Zone way of working that's like, "Here are all the things we do for a customer in a month on a checklist to help us retain them."That's where I see the interplay between things that are made explicit and ways of working and where I don't think they're necessarily exclusive.
Sam Spurlin:
Cool. That makes a lot of sense. And if you're sitting here wondering what the heck is the Twilight Zone and Sunshine Zone, may I recommend you go back and listen to a whole series that we did on Depthfinding.. For a new listener, you may be curious what that is. You should check that out.
Rodney Evans:
I feel like a new listener starting with an AUA is going to be profoundly disoriented. Good luck, boss!
Sam Spurlin:
I think it's a bold move. And if that is you, I want to hear from you. If this is your first ever episode, shoot us an email.
Rodney Evans:
How did I land on planet weirdos?
Sam Spurlin:
Nice. All right, that is it for this mini. If you've got a question of your own, hit us up at podcast[at]theready[dot]com.
Rodney Evans:
And we will see you back next week for a full episode of At Work with The Ready. Thank you so much for being a listener.