Monday, October 10, 2011

Build a better checklist

Why is the service at a Ritz-Carlton hotel noted to be better than the service at most other hotels? At Ritz-Carlton hotels, the staff works according to better checklists.

Basically, all hotels provide guests with a room and a bed. They then differentiate from one another by the quality of the furniture and the view out the window. And they further differentiate by the quality of service.

It's easy to see how to differentiate on quality of furniture. But how, exactly, does one go about differentiating on quality of service?

Nearly all hotels provide their staff with checklists of how to do their jobs. For example, there will be a checklist for how to clean a room. Quality of service is determined by the adherence to the checklist and by the quality of the checklist. Ritz-Carlton hotels have developed more effective checklists that include not only the standards for making the bed but what to do when a guest happens to ask for something unusual.

How can we create better schools? I suggest it must be done in much the same way that Ritz-Carlton makes a better hotel: more attention to exactly how the learning experience can be improved, and then replicating those improvements throughout the school so that they happen predictably and reliably.

Does your school have standards for high quality lesson plans? Standards for contacts with parents? Standards for dealing with behavior issues? And are your standards continuously evaluated for effectiveness and improved when needed?

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Keywords: continuous improvement