Book Review: The Checklist Manifesto

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If you know me at all, you know that I love lists and I love to check things off lists.  Dr. Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto explains why checklists are so critical to a commitment to excellence.  I’ve often heard people talk of checklists as being suffocating and limiting their creativity.  I find them to be just the opposite, they allow me to be more creative because I truly have to remember less.  My focus can be invested in relationships and things that have eternal value if I have made a commitment to systems and strategies that help me take care of the details.  Long ago I heard someone say “automate the important”.  If something is important and must be taken care of, don’t leave it to chance.  A checklist is a statement that I am committed to doing something the right way the first time.

I highlighted several things while reading and have posted my notes below…

  • It’s tempting to believe that no one else’s job could be as complex as mine.  But extreme complexity is the rule for almost everyone.
  • Four generations after the first aviation checklists went into use, a lesson is emerging: checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized.  They provide a kind of cognitive net.  They catch mental flaws inherent in all of us—flaws of memory and attention and thoroughness.  And because they do, they raise wide, unexpected possibilities.
  • First, how could they be sure that they had the right knowledge in hand?  Second, how could they be sure that they were applying this knowledge correctly?
  • Under conditions of complexity, not only are checklists a help, they are required for success.  There must always be room for judgement, but judgement aided—and even enhanced—by procedure.
  • The checklist cannot be lengthy.  A rule of thumb some use is to keep it to between five and nine items.
  • The wording should be simple and exact and use the familiar language of the profession.
  • Even the most expert among us can gain from searching out the patterns of mistakes and failures and putting a few checks in place.
  • We don’t like checklists.  They can be painstaking.  They’re not much fun.  But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness.  There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money.  It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment.  It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity.  The truly great are daring.  They improvise.  They do not have protocols and checklists.  Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.
  • Discipline is hard—harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness.  We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures.  We can’t even keep from snacking between meals.  We are not build for discipline.  We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail.  Discipline is something we have to work at.
  • When we look closely, we recognize the same balls being dropped over and over, even by those of great ability and determination.  We know the patterns.  We see the costs.  It’s time to try something else.  Try a checklist.

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