# The No List Checklist By:: [[Ross Jackson]] 2022-11-29 Did I show up to work on time? Check. Did I have a good attitude? Check. Did I use my knowledge to creatively resolve organizational problems? Check…It would be great if success in life or business could be reduced to a simple checklist of items that were guaranteed to generate success. There is no shortage of such lists. Much of these lists are filled with platitudes that are true enough to be beneficial but surely fall short of “guaranteeing” success. It is worth exploring why this might be so. First, organizational success isn’t something achievable through a recipe. One is responding to dynamic challenges with a team whose composition changes. What works in one situation probably isn’t going to work in another. Second, the items listed are too vague. Like the predictions found in fortune cookies, the checklist items could mean just about anything. Third, the items tend positive. As far as the checklist items are concerned, business success occurs because people are generally nice and professional as they execute their work. And yet, this is inconsistent with the observation that successful professionals are often seemingly horrible people.  Lists such as these don’t make any sense logically. One might come across a statement like, “attitude is everything.” After which, the authors present nine other things. If attitude is truly everything, the list should stop at that point. Why doesn’t it? The short answer is that while attitude is frequently important in many situations, it isn’t everything. Nor is anything else for that matter. There is no single key to success, and there is no list that can guarantee it.  To help the reader succeed the following No List Checklist has been created: - Curate and review previous lists for success in business - Internalize salient points - Burn the curated lists Authenticity is being successful while one works. It is a way of being. Any list can potentially inform your thinking. No list should define it. #### Related Items [[Authenticity]] [[Checklist]] [[Success]] [[Prescriptive Analytics]] [[Thinking]]