Book Summary: The Checklist Manifesto
The author, Atul Gawande, based the idea for the book The Checklist Manifesto from his work being a general surgeon. The Checklist Manifesto looks at how a simple checklist can drastically reduce human error in complex situations or while doing complex tasks.
Related Book Summaries:
What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast – Laura Vanderkam
Quotes:
Good checklists, on the other hand are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations.
One essential characteristic of modern life is that we all depend on systems—on assemblages of people or technologies or both—and among our most profound difficulties is making them work.
Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields—from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us.
The Checklist Manifesto Book Summary Notes:
- Checklists can help prevent mistakes. It’s the most simple option to vastly improve the outcomes of most activities.
- At their most basic a checklist is a list of steps, in order, to be completed while doing an activity.
- The results of missing or skipping a step can, in some professions especially, be catastrophic. Surgeons and pilots are among those professions that rely heavily on checklists.
- Some of the key points to a good checklist are: keep it short, include only the essentials and leave no room for misunderstandings.
- Checklists can come in two types; read-do and do-confirm. A read-do functions similar to a pre check where you read the point then do it. Whereas a do-confirm allows you to tick off the actions after you do them.
- Communication between people working in teams can be vastly improved by all working from a checklist.
