This article gives an overview of the author's book "Inside Teaching: how to make a difference for every learner and teacher" (Routledge, 2017), and focuses on how checklist processes can be used to help clarify and guide purposes and ways of working. The intention is to be systematic and explicit without being bureaucratic and moribund. Effective decisionmaking in learning and teaching is seen to be associated with choosing when and how to pay attention to what matters most. Underpinning the discussion is a twin assumption: teachers also learn and learners teach. What applies to learners usually applies to teachers too, and vice versa.