Thinking on your feet, coming up with a wildly innovative idea, out smarting your competition; these are common characteristics we often attribute to business success. They are exciting, they are elusive, they are desirable. Everyone wants to outsmart the next guy.

I want to argue that these characteristics of what makes a business successful are in fact a delusion. You don’t have to have a wildly innovative idea, you simply need to execute brilliantly on an average idea. You don’t have to think brilliantly on your feet if you have planned out your workflows and your people know what steps they are expected to take under different circumstances. You don’t have to outsmart your competition, you can out-execute them by delivering superior quality more efficiently than they do which gives you more profit and more price flexibility.

I am a recent convert. I have converted from the “innovation delusion” to “boring execution” as the path to profits. What is my favorite tool for boring execution? Checklists. Yes, boring checklists. A written list of things you do in a certain order to execute on a certain thing. The checklist is used over and over every time you do the thing. You may adjust the checklist overtime, but you NEVER try to do the thing without it because you want to do it right each time.