Checklists are a great way for us to sort order from chaos and to give us a sense of satisfaction and progress when marking items as complete.

The more sinister, subtle and often subconscious use of checklists is when we use them to let ourselves (or others) off the hook from original thinking and taking ownership – to hide behind the checklist because “this is just how we do things around here”.

The difficulty in this when it comes to marketing in the Connection Economy, is that its precisely the personal ownership that adds the human value that followers pick up on.

Since as brands (whether we realise it or not) we are now taking followers on a journey of becoming over time – on this journey, followers can sense when we switch modes and start going through the motions.

Where marketing becomes systematic and checklist driven, our work starts disconnecting from what makes us human.

Is our goal to finish the checklist?

Or is it to deliver human value to the end customer?