The Leadership Value of a Checklist: Grocery Lists to Truly Important Work

When people hear “checklist,” they usually picture a to‑do list or a grocery list. But in high‑stakes environments, checklists are not about feeling organized; they are about avoiding disaster. Pilots walk through pre‑flight checklists line by line because a single missed step can be the difference between a safe flight and a tragedy. Surgeons use safety checklists to make sure basic but critical actions are never forgotten, even when the pressure is high.

In our world, the closest equivalent is the onboarding checklist. Over the years, we have built and rebuilt our “new employee” checklist specifically to prevent simple but costly misses. It reminds us to get equipment ordered, system access set up, safety gear ready, introductions scheduled, training mapped out, and expectations clearly explained. That list is not there to make us feel busy; it is there to protect new employees from a chaotic first week and to protect the organization from dropping the ball on the basics. And it keeps evolving. Every time we discover something that slipped through the cracks—an orientation we forgot to schedule, a login that delayed productivity—we add it. The checklist grows because our learning grows.

There is a type of checklist where the goal really is to get everything done: the shopping list. If you are baking a cake and your list says eggs, flour, sugar, and butter, missing even one item means the recipe fails. A shopping list is a completeness checklist. Every item matters equally because the outcome depends on having them all. Onboarding, safety protocols, and other repeatable processes fall into this category. If you skip one “small” step, it shows up later in frustration, rework, or even real risk.

But that is not how leaders should treat their personal to‑do lists. Treating a daily checklist like a shopping list is a trap. When every task carries the same apparent weight, it becomes easy to spend a whole day knocking out quick, easy items while quietly avoiding the work that actually matters. The checklist looks fantastic—boxes everywhere, all checked—but the hard conversation, the strategic project, or the decision only you can make is still untouched.

I have been guilty of this myself. There is a real dopamine hit that comes from checking boxes. It feels good to mark ten things as “done,” even if none of them really moved the needle. Leaders can hide for weeks inside that illusion of progress. The list is full, the pen is moving, but the organization is not.

This is where the Warren Buffett story fits so well. The story goes that Buffett asked his pilot to write down his top 25 career goals. Then he told him to circle the 5 that mattered most. Naturally, the pilot assumed he would focus on those 5 while working on the other 20 when he had time. Buffett corrected him. Those other 20 were not “nice‑to‑have” goals; they were the “avoid at all costs” list. They were the distractions—good things, interesting things, but not the most important things.

Leaders face the same decision with their checklists. Most of what lands on a daily list is not bad; it is just not equal. Some items are truly critical. Others are noise that pretends to be important. A Buffett‑style approach to a leadership checklist looks something like this:

• Start by dumping everything onto the page—the full list of tasks, projects, and worries.

• Then identify the three to five that, if completed, would truly move your team, your strategy, or your culture forward.

• Treat everything else as your “avoid until the important is done” list. Not forever, but for now.

In other words, use checklists in two very different ways:

• For process work—like onboarding new employees—use “shopping‑list” checklists where every item matters. Missing a step means someone will suffer for it later, and usually it is the new person who pays the price.

• For leadership work, use “Buffett‑style” priority checklists where only a few items deserve top billing and everything else is a distraction until those are finished.

  
  

When leaders mix these up, problems follow. If onboarding is run off of memory instead of a checklist, important steps get skipped. If personal priorities are run off a shopping‑list mindset, leaders stay busy and never get to the work only they can do. The goal is not to abandon checklists; it is to use them with intention.

Checklists should keep us from making preventable mistakes in the routine work and keep us ruthlessly focused in the leadership work. They should help us take the right things from start to finish, instead of bouncing from item to item and ending the day with a full list and an empty sense of progress.