Checklist to Audit for Improvement Opportunities

1. What "legacy obligations" might now be unnecessary?

2. How might management be more streamlined? Are there still too many layers of management, … rigid job classifications, inefficiencies?

3. Are we making products customers want? How can we improve them? Anything new we should do?

4. Are there unintended consequences we don’t like or is there anything that stifles important activity?

5. How can we enhance competitiveness? Do we have anything like a “regulatory edifice created over the years” that has removed freedom needed to take responsibility?

6. How can we increase accountability?

7. Do we need any "change in culture, to a culture that answers challenges with innovation…"

8. How can we better “access their can-do spirit…?”

9. Do we need help to “surmount… inertia … (to) energize, (do) spring cleaning, realign, advance… removing shackles … (to) unleash untold resources and human energy?”

(Quotes from “Let's 'Restructure' Washington While We're at It - Congress is at least as unresponsive to consumer demand as Detroit.” By PHILIP K. HOWARD, a lawyer, chair of Common Good (www.commongood.org), and author of the new book "Life Without Lawyers," published Jan 2009 by W.W. Norton & Co.)