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Description edit
The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Summary edit
The word "checklists" just sounds boring and dull, but Gawande does a wonderful job of showing how powerful they are. Using illustrations from the medical field and various other professional applications, the author demonstrates quite powerfully that checklists can not only prove to be the... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)
Characters/People edit
- Daniel Boorman: Technical Fellow and electronic checklist procedure manager at Boeing.
- Sullenberger III: The heroic pilot who glided a crippled US Airways jet to a safe landing on the Hudson River between Jersey City and Manhattan.
- Jody Adams: Add a description of this character.
- Jeffrey Skiles
- Mr. Hagerman
- Mohnish Pabrai
- Warren Buffett
- Cook
- David Lee Roth
- Alex Haynes
- Zhi Xiong
- Guy Spier
- Donald Berwick
- Joaquim
- Joe Salvia
- Peter Pronovost
- Thor
- Anthony DeFilippo
- Charles Munger
- William LeMessurier
- Dee
- Brian Sexton
- Bernie Rouillard
- Richard Reznick
- Finn O'Sullivan
- Stephen Luby
- Robert J. McNamara
- Dr. John Snow
- Eugene Hill
- Jay Powers
- Dan Boorman
Quotes edit
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“In the money business everyone looks for an edge. If someone is doing well, people pounce like starved hyenas to find out how. Almost every idea for making even slightly more money ... gets sucked up by the giant maw almost instantly. Every idea, that is except one: checklists.”
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“Getting the steps right is hard, even if you know them.”
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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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.
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The checklist cannot be lengthy. A rule of thumb some use is to keep it to between five and nine items, which is the limit of working memory.
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Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything—a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.
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No, the real lesson is that under conditions of true complexity—where the knowledge required exceeds that of any individual and unpredictability reigns—efforts to dictate every step from the center will fail. People need room to act and adapt. Yet they cannot succeed as isolated individuals, either—that is anarchy. Instead, they require a seemingly contradictory mix of freedom and expectation—expectation to coordinate, for example, and also to measure progress toward common goals.
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The philosophy is that you push the power of decision making out to the periphery and away from the center. You give people the room to adapt, based on their experience and expertise. All you ask is that they talk to one another and take responsibility. That is what works.
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The wording should be simple and exact, Boorman went on, and use the familiar language of the profession. Even the look of the checklist matters. Ideally, it should fit on one page. It should be free of clutter and unnecessary colors. It should use both uppercase and lowercase text for ease of reading. (He went so far as to recommend using a sans serif type like Helvetica.)
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The second type of failure the philosophers call ineptitude—because in these instances the knowledge exists, yet we fail to apply it correctly.
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under conditions of complexity, not only are checklists a help, they are required for success. There must always be room for judgment, but judgment aided—and even enhanced—by procedure.
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That routine requires balancing a number of virtues: freedom and discipline, craft and protocol, specialized ability and group collaboration. And for checklists to help achieve that balance, they have to take two almost opposing forms. They supply a set of checks to ensure the stupid but critical stuff is not overlooked, and they supply another set of checks to ensure people talk and coordinate and accept responsibility while nonetheless being left the power to manage the nuances and unpredictabilities the best they know how.
Highlighted by 172 Kindle customers -
Checklists seem to provide protection against such failures. They remind us of the minimum necessary steps and make them explicit. They not only offer the possibility of verification but also instill a kind of discipline of higher performance.
Highlighted by 166 Kindle customers
Setting & Locations edit
- United States
- Boston
- London
- India
- Seattle
- Jordan
- Salvia
- Michigan
- New Zealand
- Honolulu
- Geneva
- Tanzania
First Sentence edit
I was chatting with a medical school firend of mine who is now a general surgeon in San Franciso.
Table of Contents edit
The problem of extreme complexity
The checklist
The end of the master builder
The idea
The first try
The checklist factory
The test
The hero in the age of checklists
The save.
Authors & Contributors edit
- Atul Gawande (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Country: USA
Publication Date: December 2009
ISBN: 978-0805091748
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Country: USA
Publication Date: December 2009
ISBN: 978-0805091748
Page Count: 224
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: RA 399 .A1 G39 2010
- Dewey: 610.289
Subjects edit
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Links to Supplemental Material edit
- Gawande.com: additional resources/links about Gawnde's checklist work
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