In 1996, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers completed their 14th-straight losing season. Team morale was low, management was dissatisfied, and fans were more disappointed than La La Land at the Oscars.

Something changed that season, though, as head coach Tony Dungy implemented a strategy thus far untested in the NFL. Like most football teams, the Bucs’ practices consisted of a run through of various plays, drills, and game plans they anticipated utilizing in game situations. The Bucs practiced these formations over and over, completing each item on their practice checklist before moving on swiftly to the next.

Coach Dungy, however, had a different game plan.

In order to win, Dungy surmised, the Bucs would have to replace their checklist-based practice strategy with a practice plan that would evaluate team weaknesses and eliminate them. And that’s exactly what he did. The result? The Bucs would go on to finish with a winning record in the next six seasons straight, capped off by a Super Bowl win in 2002, and Dungy would eventually become the first coach in the history of the NFL to lead his team to the playoffs during ten consecutive seasons.

So how did one of the worst teams in NFL history become one of the greatest? Simple. Instead of dedicating their practices to marking drills off of a checklist, they analyzed specific weaknesses at the most basic levels of their game and then took simple, corrective actions to remedy those weaknesses. Soon, the results from this strategy’s implementation would speak for itself.

Business organizations operate much like football teams, though most carry with them a substantially lower risk of being tackled by someone twice your size. Like the ’96 Bucs, however, many businesses fall short of their ultimate potential because they have simply relied on old and outdated tools to help them achieve their goals.

Of these tools, perhaps the most common one is the checklist app. Checklist apps serve largely the same function as manual record keeping: they provide an accurate, if somewhat superficial, record of how your company’s policies are being implemented. Let’s look at some of the reasons why these apps fall short.

1. They are rigid. Because checklist apps are meant to do one thing and one thing only, they don’t offer much flexibility in their formatting. In order to include anything outside of that limited scope, you must either rely on manual tracking or an outside software component.

The rigidity of checklist apps is meant to create simplicity in the way they are utilized. In an economic atmosphere where regulations and company policy can quickly change, however, these restrictions become more cumbersome than useful, and can ultimately mean more time and resources wasted working around the problem.

2. They don’t give you informed analytics. Checklist apps may assist you in tracking the completion of tasks, but they don’t give you a big-picture view of what the implementation of those tasks looks like. While other tools, such as advanced quality management software, can give you exact numbers, trends over time and other useful analytical information, checklist apps require that you perform all of the analytical work on your own—a needless waste of valuable time and resources.

3. They don’t provide a useful system for implementing and tracking updates. In today’s economic environment, circumstances can change in an instant. As a result, immediate changes to company policy and practice are necessary. Relaying this information to each member of a team can be difficult, and the confusion that can come when those updates are not applied simultaneously can stagnate a
team’s progress. Cloud-based inspection software can be updated across the board in real-time, eliminating such confusion, but a checklist app alone will often complicate situations where changes need to be implemented in a timely fashion throughout the entire team.

Moving away from checklist apps and toward more advanced software can elevate your company’s ability to track and utilize data immensely. This added ability will eliminate confusion, lighten the loads on your employees, and ultimately make your company more efficient. And let’s face it, better efficiency means better results—whether you’re managing a business or trying to win a Super Bowl.