Using Checklists to Simplify Consulting Tasks

This one checklist made my life 10x easier (Save hours later by following these steps now!) Over the last 22 months, I’ve attended 184 walkthrough meetings. Trial. Error. Frustration. Fixes. And through all of that, I created this simple system. A checklist that every auditor should follow after the walkthrough ends. If you’re tired of scrambling for screenshots, losing notes, and chasing follow-ups days later, Save this post. Share it with your team. Use it every time. Post-Walkthrough Checklist: The SOP I swear by 1. Segregate your screenshots (Immediately) - Use Windows + Print Screen to capture quickly. - Create a new folder right after the meeting using this format: [Date]_[Control_ID]_[ControlName]_[AuditName] - This makes it easy to find everything later. 2. Store in two places - One local folder on your laptop - One shared folder (e.g., Teams) so others don’t need to ping you 3. Summarize your notes - Right after the meeting, take 5–10 minutes to clean up your notes. - Capture who said what, any key clarifications, and system flows. 4. Save notes smartly - Again one local, one shared. - Use the same naming format for consistency. 5. List out all follow-ups in one place - Don’t rely on memory. - If something needs clarification or additional evidence, document it immediately. 6. Assign owners and due dates - Use a tracker to assign each follow-up to a control owner with a clear timeline. - This alone will save you days of back-and-forth. 7. Update your main control tracker - Capture the status of the walkthrough and all pending items. - If your team doesn’t have a control tracker, create one. (And if they do make sure you’re using it daily.) Bonus: I personally keep a tracker with separate tabs for each audit I’m working on. Every control I’m assigned gets listed with deadlines, dependencies, and current status. This isn’t just a checklist. It’s a habit. Follow it after every walkthrough and your future self will thank you during wrap-up week. Have your own post-walkthrough system? Drop it below! I’d love to see how others do it.

The AI workflow produced great results, yet people did not feel safe relying on the output. ⛔ That was the situation I encountered in a client workshop in Brussels last week, and it is far more common than most organisations like to admit. The team had invested time and effort into designing an AI-supported workflow. The use case was clear, the technical setup was sound, the data quality was acceptable, and the people involved had already received training on how to use AI. Despite all of this, the workflow was barely used in practice. People ran the AI step, reviewed the output, and then quietly redid the work themselves. During the workshop, we mapped the real workflow together, step by step, focusing not on how the process was documented but on how the work actually happened on a normal working day. At one point, a participant looked at the whiteboard and said: “I only trust the result after I have checked it myself anyway.” That sentence shifted the entire conversation. As we continued mapping the process, a pattern became visible: Everyone validated AI outputs differently.  Some checked everything, even low-risk drafts.  Others barely checked high-risk decisions. Accountability was assumed but never explicitly defined. Human validation was happening constantly, but it was invisible, inconsistent, and highly personal. We redesigned the workflow and introduced a simple checklist for built-in human validation. 💡 This checklist replaced individual safety habits with a shared, explicit process. ✅ Define the risk level of the output. Clarify whether the AI output is a draft, a recommendation, or a decision with external impact. ✅ Decide if validation is required. Make it explicit which outputs require human review and which can flow through without intervention. ✅ Specify the validation moment. Define when validation happens in the workflow and before which downstream step. ✅ Assign clear responsibility. Name the role that validates the output and the role that makes the final decision. ✅ Separate generation from judgment. Ensure the AI prepares content or options, while humans remain accountable for approval and outcomes. ✅ Remove unnecessary checks. Regularly review the workflow to eliminate validation steps that add friction without reducing risk. Once this checklist was applied, people felt much more confident about the AI output because they knew when human judgment was required. 👉 Is human validation in your AI workflows clearly designed, or is it still improvised? Let’s discuss.

Here’s something I wish I had started doing as a law firm associate: using checklists for project intake. Too often, when a project is handed over, details get missed, and questions go unanswered, leading to confusion, frustration, write-offs, and avoidable mistakes. Part of the problem is that senior lawyers usually aren’t trained in assigning work effectively. That’s how you end up with emails being forwarded with directives like: “pls handle” or "pls fix." A checklist can help a junior lawyer who is unclear on a request gain clarity. It can also help a senior lawyer become more thoughtful and consistent in how work gets delegated. Atul Gawande writes about this in The Checklist Manifesto (one of my favorite business/productivity books). Gawande is one of my favorite authors, generally. He is an orthogonal thinker in the best sense of the term—someone who looks across disciplines, borrows ideas from other fields, and applies them in practical ways. He writes as a surgeon, but his insights apply well beyond medicine. One of his core points is that in complex environments, problems arise because complexity overwhelms the human brain. Important steps get skipped, assumptions go untested, and small omissions create bigger problems downstream. That idea applies just as much to legal work as it does to surgery or aviation. A simple checklist can make legal project intake cleaner and reduce the odds that important details slip through the cracks. Here are a few helpful prompts: When? Make sure you are clear on the deadline. If there is a filing deadline or a date by which something has to go to a client, when does the assigning lawyer need to see a draft? Clarify what is meant by “ASAP” or “COB.” Who? Who is the audience? Is it an internal memo? Is it going to the client? Is the client a lawyer or a business person? This matters because it helps ensure the work product strikes the right tone and includes the right level of detail. What? What are the client’s work product preferences? Lots of detail and citations? A short list of practical conclusions? Also, what is the scope of the assignment? Spend a few hours and report back on initial findings, or go deep and try to reach a final answer? Why? Why does this matter? What is the context, and how does what I am doing fit into the bigger picture of the representation? Are there other issues I should be on the lookout for? Clarity comes from asking good questions. A checklist helps make sure those questions actually get asked. Create a checklist for the types of projects you commonly work on. It is a simple habit, but it can make a significant difference. You will feel more organized, work will move more smoothly, and fewer details will slip through the cracks.

𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐈 𝐨𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐚 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐞, 𝐈 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐲𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝟔–𝟕 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐩𝐬: 𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐆 𝐒𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐞, 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬, 𝐆𝐨𝐨𝐠𝐥𝐞 𝐓𝐚𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐫, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞. And because I never documented anything properly, I kept repeating the same painful process over and over. Until I finally built detailed SOPs using Process Street.   Here's what changed: I broke down every single step of client onboarding into a checklist. Hosting setup? ✅ Content strategy? ✅ Google Business Profile optimization? ✅ GMB? Press releases? Tag-based silos? All turned into repeatable steps. Now? What used to take me 6 hours per client is now a 30-minute VA task. 👉 According to McKinsey, companies that document and automate their SOPs see up to 30% improvement in efficiency.  👉 Process Street, Scribe, and Notion are excellent tools to get started with SOPs. If your agency feels stuck, the problem isn’t your clients—it’s your systems. Start with a checklist. Build SOPs. Then get the hell out of your own way.

Ok guys. You fought one fire too many and said enough's enough, our agency needs a process for this. So you made that beautiful SOP with all the links and had everyone dump everything from their brain... and yet... still nobody knows wtf is supposed to happen. You want to actually solve the problem, your process has to be 1. simple 2. usable 3. scalable. Easier said then done. I know, me, an ops/finance/leadership expert and I'm still saying it's tough. Why? Bc we're human! This is the work we want to just be done already so we can have the results, but we don't actually want to invest the time, discipline, or finances to do it well. So here’s the method that worked best for me growing an agency from startup to $10M with systems that actually stuck (& didn't suck 🤣 ). 🔍 Simple = clear. Simple ≠ basic. Start with a visual map. (Miro, Canva, or ClickUp all work great.) Something that helps your brain see the big picture before zooming into the steps. Then outline the process in a doc: » Each task » Who owns it » When it’s due (relative to the overall workflow) » Description + links to resources/templates » Checklist of actions » Subtasks + dependencies Your tasks should be your source of truth, where the process is integrated into the actual work. Great process documentation doesn’t have to be hunted down bc it's right in front of your face where the work happens. 💪🏽 Usable = actually followed. Usable ≠ I understand it, why don't you. Once the process is defined, build it into your PM platform as a template. Monday, ClickUp, Asana, Teamwork... take your pick, idc, but ideally use ONE. Then roll it out with patience. ↳ Host walkthroughs. Share the why, explain the goal, set expectations, & *walk* through the flow. Highly recommend multiple sessions for team-specific & role-specific nuances. ↳ Run a mock client exercise. Assign the full process like it's real and watch for friction. You'll catch gaps, errors, missing links, unclear instructions, before it goes live. ↳ (I know I'm a broken record but) Build accountability into the process. If something gets skipped, the workflow should stall. If you have to manage people through reminders and nudges, that's a flag the process isn't solid yet bc when it's clear and owned, the gaps reveal themselves. 📈 Scalable = evolves with you. Scalable ≠ reinventing the wheel. The process doc is your editable hub. When something needs to be changed, you should have roles responsible to update the doc, confirm with leadership or team, & apply the update to the task templates. Use a highlighting system in the doc to track: • Needs updating • Changed, not yet confirmed/approved • Approved + ready to go • Remove highlights once it's live in the system And that’s it. That's how to build a process that holds steady AND stays flexible. And when you do it this way, your processes support growth without burning people out along the way.

94% of failures in business aren't people problems. They're system problems. A Fortune 500 CEO once fired 3 assistants in 6 months. All for "forgetting" critical tasks. The 4th assistant implemented a simple checklist. Zero mistakes for 2 years straight. Same role. Same tasks. Different system. Leaders often get mad when a job is not finished. You ask your employee, "Why wasn't this done?" They say, "I forgot." Or they say, "I got busy with something else." You think the problem is the person. But the problem is usually the system. Most people on your team want to do a great job. They don't want to make you upset. When they fail, it's often because the process was unclear. It was not their fault. They were never given a clear, step-by-step path to follow. If you just give an instruction, it will fail. If you build a bulletproof system, it will work. Your most important job as a leader is to build these systems. The system is the way you make sure things happen every time. How to Build a System That Works ✅ 1. Pick one task that always gets forgotten, like checking lab reports. 2. Do that task yourself while writing down every single step. 3. Be clear about the order. 4. Turn those steps into a visual checklist. 5. This is your new process. 6. Teach the team to use the checklist every single day. Now, the team follows the system, not just a memory. This is how you create reliable results. Systems make people reliable. Stop blaming the people. Start fixing the process. That's how you get consistency and reduce mistakes. 🛠️ What's one process in your business that feels broken right now? Let me know in the comments below ⬇ 🚀 Feel exhausted but not sure where to begin? I built a diagnostic tool that reveals what's keeping you stuck — and the fastest way out. ✔ Free to use ✔ Takes only 3 minutes ✔ Already used by 800+ professionals to gain clarity Take the quiz now: https://lnkd.in/eNKE_kaJ 👋 Hi, I'm Sharon Grossman! I help organizations reduce turnover. ♻️ Repost to support your network. 🔔 Follow me for more leadership truth bombs