Questions to Carry Back to Work

This is not a checklist to complete in one meeting.

Choose one question that feels uncomfortably familiar. Talk with the people closest to the work. Identify one visible change. Then return later and determine whether the change held.

1. What are people compensating for?
Where are employees supplying extra speed, strength, memory, patience, or courage because the system does not fully support the work?

2. Where has the safe way drifted away from the way the work is actually done?
Which written procedures no longer match the real task, layout, staffing level, equipment, or pressure employees encounter?

3. What has become so familiar that people no longer see it?
What would a new employee, visitor, patient, resident, or customer notice immediately that experienced people have learned to walk past?

4. What is the workplace asking people to carry in their heads?
Which instructions, exceptions, unfinished tasks, equipment locations, or changing priorities could be supported by a list, visual cue, checklist, clearer sequence, or better placement?

5. What does the next person or next shift need to know?
Where are near misses, minor injuries, equipment problems, resident changes, workarounds, or unexpected conditions failing to travel to the people who will encounter them next?

6. What happens when someone pauses, asks for help, or raises a concern?
Are people thanked, supported, ignored, embarrassed, or treated as though they are slowing everyone down?

7. Who is teaching the real rules of the workplace?
Which formal and informal leaders influence whether people speak honestly, use the equipment, welcome newcomers, accept correction, and protect one another?

8. What are leaders repeatedly walking past?
What behavior or condition might employees reasonably interpret as acceptable because people with authority see it and say nothing?

9. Where does the standard change with rank, department, shift, or personality?
Would the same action be corrected consistently regardless of who performed it?

10. What is one visible change you can make now?

Choose one recurring source of friction or risk.

Name the person responsible for the next step.

Make the change visible.

Tell employees what happened.

Then return and ask:

Did the change make the work safer, clearer, or easier?

Did it last?

What did we learn?

Drift develops one ordinary decision at a time.

Workplaces interrupt it the same way.

Drift develops one ordinary decision at a time.

Workplaces interrupt it the same way.