Management foundations checklist for managers

A management foundations checklist is only worth having if the items can fail. Most management checklists are lists of virtues ("communicate clearly", "support your team"), which nobody can tick honestly because nobody can tick them dishonestly either.

What follows is written so each item has a concrete pass condition. Some will not apply to you. The ones that make you uncomfortable are the ones to look at.

What to take away

Every person knows what their priority is, and their answer matches yours.
Each person has had feedback on something specific and recent.
Expectations have been restated in writing and still match what the business wants.

Weekly

Every person knows what their priority is, and their answer matches yours.

Weekly management checks

Priorities match between you and team
One-to-ones rescheduled, not canceled
Promises kept or explicitly dropped
No decision blocking someone for days
Talked about work, not just status

No one-to-one was canceled without being moved. Pass: rescheduled to a specific slot. Fail: "we'll catch up next week."

Everything you promised in last week's conversations either happened or was explicitly dropped, with the person told. Pass: you can list them. Fail: you cannot remember what you promised, which is the usual state, and the reason to write them down during the conversation.

No decision is sitting with you, blocking someone, for more than a few days. Pass: you know what is on your desk. Fail: you find out someone was waiting when they mention it in passing.

You spoke to at least one person about something other than status. Pass: an actual conversation about the work, an obstacle, or where they are heading.

Fortnightly or monthly

Each person has had feedback on something specific and recent.

Fortnightly or monthly checks

Specific recent feedback given to each person
Overload known from evidence, not complaints
No single-point-of-failure work without plan
Recurring meetings produced a decision
Quiet competent person got proper attention

You know who is overloaded: from evidence, not from complaints. Pass: you have looked at who is being asked questions and who is being pulled into things, not just who has tasks assigned. Fail: your view comes entirely from who has told you they are struggling, which selects for the people most comfortable saying so.

No work is dependent on exactly one person without a plan. Pass: you can name the single points of failure and what is being done about each. Fail: you assume the documentation covers it.

Every recurring meeting you own produced a decision, or has a stated reason not to. Fail: it continues because it is in the calendar.

The quiet, competent person has had proper attention. Pass: they got the same depth of conversation as whoever is currently generating drama. Fail: this is the item most commonly failed, and the failure is invisible until they leave.

Quarterly

Expectations have been restated in writing and still match what the business wants.

Quarterly management checks

Expectations restated in writing and current
Nothing in review would be new
Someone took on a decision you used to make
Asked team what to do differently, acted
Unmeasured work has been recognized

Nothing in an upcoming review would be new to the person. Pass: every concern has already been raised at least once, in person. Guidance from the US Office of Personnel Management on the performance management cycle treats this as continuous monitoring rather than as an annual event, which is the point of putting it on a quarterly list. Fail: you are planning to raise it in the review because that felt like the right venue. It is not.

Someone has taken on a decision you used to make. Pass: you can name it, and you have stopped being told about the outcome each time. Fail: your decision load is identical to three months ago, which means nobody is developing and you are still the bottleneck.

You have asked your team what you should do differently, and acted visibly on at least one thing. Fail: you asked and nothing changed. Worse than not asking.

Work that does not show up in any measure has been recognized. Pass: you can name who does the maintenance, the support, the enabling work that appears in other people's results.

Before anything with formal consequences

This section is a stop, not a checklist. Before starting a performance process, a disciplinary step, a change to someone's terms, a redundancy, or a dismissal:

Before formal consequences

Speak to HR or employment adviser first
Raise concern informally unless reason not to
Ensure records are contemporaneous

You have spoken to HR or your employer's employment adviser, before taking any step. Rules on procedure, notice, documentation, protected characteristics, and fair process differ by jurisdiction and by employer, and getting them wrong causes serious problems for the person and the organization. In the United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) enforces federal employment-discrimination laws including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act; these laws are not a universal procedural guide for every formal employment action, and state law may add requirements. This is not something to work out from a checklist, including this one.

The concern has been raised informally first, unless there is a reason it should not have been. Some situations (safety, harassment, anything requiring investigation), should not be handled informally. Your adviser will tell you which.

Your records are contemporaneous. Notes written at the time, not reconstructed afterward.

Signals that something is wrong

Not items to tick. Things to notice, because each usually means something specific. Two of them are structural rather than personal: a single point of failure and a meeting that exists to review another meeting are both facts about the shape of the work, which is the subject of operating processes. The seven signals below are warning signs to notice:

A person's stated priority does not match the manager's.
A one-to-one is canceled without being moved to a specific slot.
Promises from conversations are forgotten or dropped without telling the person.
A decision is sitting with the manager and blocking someone.
Feedback is being saved for a review instead of shared while it is recent.
Work depends on one person and there is no plan for that dependency.
A recurring meeting produces no decision, or exists to review another meeting.

Signals something is wrong

Nobody brings you problems early
You are the only person with full picture
Two people disagree on ownership
Someone's work quality changed noticeably
Meeting exists to review another meeting
People careful around a topic or person
Calendar has no unbooked time

Using this without it becoming ritual

Three suggestions.

Do not run the whole thing every week. Pick the section on its cadence. A checklist run out of duty gets ticked out of duty.

Answer for a specific person or a specific piece of work, not in general. "Does everyone know their priority?" gets a comfortable yes. "Does the person who joined six weeks ago know theirs?" does not.

Delete the items that never fail in your context, and add the ones your own failures suggest. After a few months you will have a shorter list that is actually about your situation, which is the point: a generic checklist is a starting position, not the finished artifact. The same argument, made in a setting where checklists carry more weight than they do here, is in the checklists primer from the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

For the underlying practices these items test, see the management foundations overview. The weekly items depend on mechanics covered in team management, and the quarterly ones about expectations lead into performance management.

Common questions

Is a checklist not a bit mechanical for managing people?

The checklist is not for the people; it is for the manager's attention, which is unreliable in predictable ways. Under pressure, everyone neglects the same things: the quiet person, the deferred conversation, the delegation that never happened. Those are exactly what this catches.

What if I fail most of these?

Most managers fail several at any time. Pick the one whose failure is doing the most damage, usually the priority mismatch or the deferred conversation, and fix that one. Working through the list in order produces a lot of activity and not much change.

How is this different from a performance review of myself?

A review looks backward and produces a judgment. This looks at the current state and produces an action this week. Nothing here needs to be reported to anyone.