When the procedure changes, the check must change

The week the check was wrong

Sofia runs a kitchen with fourteen staff and a lot of turnover. Her allergen procedure is the one document in the place that everyone has to know, and for a year she's run a short check on it: six questions, every new starter in week one, everyone else once a quarter.

On a Tuesday in March she changed the procedure. A new step, and a change to which board is used for what. She updated the laminated sheet on the wall, told the Tuesday shift, and sent a message to the rest.

Nine days later, a new starter passed the allergen check with six out of six. Every answer was correct according to the questions. Two of them were wrong according to the kitchen, because the questions were still testing the March-before procedure. The check had become a record of what used to be true, and it was handing out full marks for it.

Check: Why was a six-out-of-six result on the allergen check a problem nine days after the procedure changed?

A check is a claim about a document

The principle that came out of that week, in one sentence: a knowledge check is a claim about a specific version of a specific document, and it's only as true as that link.

When the questions were drafted, they were drafted from the sheet on the wall as it was in February. Change the sheet and the questions don't change by themselves. They can't. They don't know. Someone has to look at the new sheet and decide what the check should now ask, exactly the way someone had to look at the old sheet and decide the first time.

That sounds obvious written down. It's the kind of obvious that gets missed on a busy Tuesday, which is why it needs a habit rather than good intentions.

Check: In one sentence, what is a knowledge check a claim about?

One source, one check

The thing that makes the habit possible is keeping one source document per check, and making the check from that document and nothing else.

Sofia's allergen check comes from the allergen sheet. Not from the induction pack, not from a mix of three documents, not from what the head chef remembers. One sheet. When the sheet changes, the draft is written again from the new sheet, she reads the new questions, and approves what's right.

It matters because of what happens when you don't. A check drawn from three documents has three ways to go stale, and nobody can say which questions belong to which source. One source, one check, and the question "is this check current?" becomes the question "is this the current sheet?", which anyone can answer by looking at the date on it.

Check: Why should each check be made from one source document only?

What changed, and what that did to the questions

Here's the change Sofia made and what it did to each of the six questions, because it's smaller than you'd think and that's the point.

The change. A new step (confirm the allergen ticket with the pass before plating) and a swap of which board colour is used for allergen-free prep.

The six questions after the redraft:

• Two questions didn't touch the changed parts. Kept as they were.
• One question asked which board is used for allergen-free prep. The right answer had changed. The old right answer became a wrong option, which is the best possible wrong option, because it's the mistake everyone who learnt the old way is about to make.
• One question was a scenario about plating. It needed the new step added as the right answer, and the old sequence as a distractor.
• One written question asked the person to list the steps before plating. Sofia rewrote the expected answer to the new sequence, in the words on the sheet.
• One question was fine but now sat in the wrong place; it moved.

Four edits. Ten minutes, including reading. The alternative was nine days of full marks for the wrong procedure.

Check: What happened to the question about board colour when the procedure changed, and why was that useful?

Reading the redraft: the old answer is hiding somewhere

When a check is redrafted from a changed document, the reading pass has one extra job: find the old answer.

It's usually in one of three places. As a right answer that should now be wrong, because the draft reached for something it had seen before. As a wrong option that is now, accidentally, right. Or in the expected answer for a written question, where a step from the old sequence survives in the middle of the new one.

Sofia reads the redraft with the old sheet and the new sheet side by side, and goes looking for the old sheet's words. Two minutes. It's the only part of the reading pass that's different from the first time.

Check: Where are the three places the old answer tends to hide in a redrafted check?

Everyone retakes, and the record shows who's on the new version

Once the new check is approved, everyone sits it again, not just new starters. The quarterly rhythm is suspended; the change is the trigger.

Every attempt is kept with its date, so the record now reads plainly: attempts before the change are attempts at the old version, attempts after it are attempts at the new one. Sofia doesn't have to keep a separate list of who's been told. She opens the check and looks at who has an attempt dated after the Tuesday, and who doesn't. The ones who don't get a nudge that it's waiting.

The people who got the board question wrong on the new version are, almost without exception, the people who'd been there longest. That's not a failure. That's exactly who a change is hardest for, and exactly who the check is for.

Check: How does the kept record tell Sofia who has taken the new version of the check?

Small changes and big ones

Not every change needs a redraft, and knowing which is which keeps the habit light enough to survive.

A wording change (same steps, clearer sentence): check whether any question quotes the old wording. Usually none does. Change nothing, or one expected answer.

A step changes (a new one, one removed, or the order changes): redraft from the new sheet, read it with both sheets beside you, everyone retakes.

The document is replaced (new procedure, new structure): new check. Keep the old one's attempts as the record of the old procedure; don't edit them into something else.

Sofia writes the sheet's date into the check's title, so "Allergen procedure (12 Mar)" is a sentence anyone in the kitchen can compare with the date on the wall.

Check: What is the difference in what to do after a wording change and after a step change?

What drift looks like

A check that's quietly drifted away from its document gives three signs, and all three are easy to miss because they look like good news.

Everyone passes. A check nobody ever gets wrong is either testing something everyone knows, or testing the old version that everyone learnt first. Full marks across the board is a reason to look, not to relax.

Nobody asks. A current check on a live procedure generates the odd "hang on, is that right?". Silence means either the check is perfect or nobody's reading the questions against what they actually do.

The document is newer than the check. The simplest sign, and the one to look for first. If the sheet on the wall has a later date than the check, the check is describing something that no longer exists.

Check: What are the three signs that a check has drifted from its document?

A five-minute monthly habit

What Sofia does now, on the first Monday of the month, in five minutes:

1. Open the list of procedures that have a check. There are four.
2. For each, compare the date on the document with the date in the check's title.
3. Where the document is newer, that check goes on the list to redraft this week.
4. Where they match, done.

And one rule that holds it together: the person who owns the document owns the check. If the head chef changes the allergen sheet, the head chef redrafts the allergen check, or tells Sofia the same day. A procedure with no owner drifts; a check with a different owner from its document drifts faster.

Check: What is the monthly habit, and what is the ownership rule that holds it together?

If you're in Australia

What your allergen, cleaning or safety procedures must say is decided by the rules that apply to your business and your state, and this post doesn't speak to them. It's about the other half: whatever your procedure says today, the check should say the same thing today, and the date on the sheet is the quickest way to tell. Swap this section for your own country's framing; nothing above depends on it.

Check: Which half of the problem does the post address, and which half does it leave to the rules that apply to the business?

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