The Checklist Manifesto

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.

Checklists are boring, stifle creativity and are unnecessary. I think this is how most people think about them and their use. Mr. Gawande, a successful surgeon, in this book details how he think the medical field has become so sophisticated that it is hard for one person to remember, consistently, all the steps that need to be taken by all the team members during a surgical event.

Mr. Gawande, in a effort to improve surgical results in general, looks at the airline and building industry to see how they reduce the risk of failure in their operations since in either industry, just as in surgery, if a complication happens they can be very devastating.

What he found, in both cases, is the embedded use of checklists. In both cases the details of flying a plane and building a skyscraper are extremely complex and require strict attention to detail and excellent communication between parties. The use of checklist helps to make sure critical steps are missed.

Hopefully this is enough to get you interested in checking this book out. Trust me, you will not be disappointed.