The Checklist Manifesto
The AVP of my team asked “what are you reading?”
I said “The Checklist Manifesto”
“What is it about?”
It’s about the importance of checklists and....
Before I finish the sentence, he told me with a lot of sarcasm “You need to read a book for that!” And that kind of sums up our abysmal attitude towards checklists. Checklists are just one of the trivialities, formalities who hinder us rather than help us. In fact for me it was not even a triviality or formality. It just didn’t exist. But this book opened me to a world that I was alienated from . It took me from intensive care units to the cockpit of a plane to the corporate dungeons of the financial world. And it showed me how a Simple, perfunctory checklist saved a lot of dollars from going down the drain and a lot of lives from dying in vain. It displayed how major mishaps were averted and irreversible mistakes were avoided. I think a checklist help us avoid the oversight that can breed due to familiarity and experience and help us avoid slight errors which are considered to be trivial that can cause consequences unforeseeable in magnitude and proportions due to our engagement with the vicissitudes of life or our profession. In fact it can be as simple as saving your file while working on it to avoid loss of data in case of a sporadic shutdown of our system. The author works hard to explain the psychological indifference to checklist. We always view our legends and heroes who circumnavigate the maze of complexity in their profession through improvisation, or who achieve supernatural feats through autonomous decisions taken on the go either by following their hunch or gut as we say or by breaking through the barriers of conventional wisdom and create moments of excellence. But we refuse to acknowledge that their success may not be attributable to action inspired by intuition or moments of excellence but by simply following a protocol and be disciplined in following that protocol even in the midst of complexity and adversity. I still remember my sport hero Rahul Dravid say while advising young sportsman that when you are going though a rough patch in your career just go back to your basics and get them right. When he says “Basics” they are nothing but a form of checklist that we often overlook or regard as frivolous as we advance in our career and the significance of which we highly underestimate or downplay in our progress due to the blurred view caused by the hazy mist of our arrogance or overwhelming success. He also shows how a checklist can even radically change the culture of an organization. For eg checklists already used in sectors of aviation and construction always have a checklist in hand where there are pause points when everyone assembles as a team and voice their concern. Also it states down the duties of every person involved from the head to the lowliest worker of the organization making everyone feel as a part of the same team .This does away with autocratic decision making still prevalent in many organization where finger wagging officials just considers others in the team as mere pencil-pushers whose only job is to obey and follow and where communication is just one way street -from top to bottom. This brings in a culture of teamwork and inclusiveness. He also explains that often checklists are considered as a hindrance one needs to get away with in order to get straight to the task which requires a cobweb of intricate skills interwoven by in-depth technical knowledge but he points that the purpose of checklists is just the opposite that is to finish the task that are simple but highly necessary and significant that can be overlooked or brushed aside and intently focus on the complex task ahead. He also explains in details how to prepare a checklist which is a science in itself where you have to maintain the perfect balance of brevity and detail. Checklists are created for the very purpose to have attention to detail yet if very detailed and long it is unsustainable and remains unused as a yellow stained copy of an old book. Also checklist should be specific without any ambiguity and vagueness succinctly spelling out the responsibility and accountability of each person involved. Also why checklists are important because a checklists draws lessons from the experience of failures and also from mere experiences of veterans in a profession and incorporate them in easy manageable actions to refer to when such an event occurs where we are often found to be utterly inexperienced. As this a mere book review but in case of any doubt you can read this book which you should and read the mind-boggling statistics that are almost implausible to believe. Lastly he gives a brilliant example that professions are increasingly becoming like a car.
So what would happen if you join together the engine of a Ferrari, brakes of a Porsche, suspension of a BMW and body of a Volvo. What we would get is not a car but an expensive piece of shit. Checklists just help to avoid that shit from happening.
