The Checklist Manifesto is a non-fiction work by Atul Gawande, an American surgeon, public health researcher and writer.

Summary

What we need to know has grown to the point where we can't keep it in mind without some kind of guide. We need a tool to help us leverage on this wealth of knowledge, instead of letting it overwhelm us.

Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us.

Using checklists help people spend their cognitive effort on decision-making

Checklists ensures that we can deploy our expertise at the right time and in the right place, and in sync with other required operations. For example in medicine, patient care can involve multiple specialists with more than a hundred tasks to be completed. Without some form of tracking, it becomes impossible to ensure all tasks are completed on time, in-place.

Most importantly, checklists free us up from having to devote attention to recalling the different steps of our tasks. We are not meant to memorise and regurgitate. Instead, we have the possibility of maximising the attention available at every step of our decision-making.

Checklists help teams become even more effective

Just as checklists help the individual maximise their attention on higher-level tasks, their proper use enable teams to maximise their reach.

Just as knowledge becomes too difficult for ourselves to keep track, they prevent us from talking to each other meaningfully. What the other is a master of, we stop being able to comprehend. There is then a need to keep talking to each other.

What reminds us of this? Checklists.

We can ensure constant communication, thus preventing the "cacophony of incompatible decisions" that come with placing specialists together without minding their cooperation. We prevent the disengagement promoted from the lack of understanding. We enforce that everyone is responsible for the project's success.

When do checklists work?

First of all, checklists have a possibility of working only when people use them.

When users design and own their own checklists, they are naturally more likely to be used.

The point of a checklist is not to teach a beginner how to do a task. Such a comprehensive record would be seen as unnecessary to those competent. Following are some other ideas that can enhance the use of checklists:

They only go through the essential steps, but ones that are easily missed out by a team in motion.
They are "efficient, to the point, and easy to use."
They provide a smooth workflow of all tools involved in the task described.

Call to Action

Create a checklist of at least 3 items, that you can use in your personal or professional life. Try it out today.

Interesting quotes

".....the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably."
"In the absence of a true Master Builder—a supreme, all-knowing expert with command of all existing knowledge—autonomy is a disaster. It produces only a cacophony of incompatible decisions and overlooked errors."
"The assumption was that anything could go wrong, anything could get missed. What? Who knows? That’s the nature of complexity. But it was also assumed that, if you got the right people together and had them take a moment to talk things over as a team rather than as individuals, serious problems could be identified and averted."
"…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."
"...the more familiar and widely dangerous issue is a kind of silent disengagement, the consequence of specialized technicians sticking narrowly to their domains. “That’s not my problem” is possibly the worst thing people can think, whether they are starting an operation, taxiing an airplane full of passengers down a runway, or building a thousand-foot-tall skyscraper."