The Checklist Manifesto

#learningIsAGift ?
#rituals of #theBeautifulJourney 

I’ve read The Checklist Manifesto as part of the reading club at my work place.
I’ve enjoyed the book and found it very quick and easy to read. Here are a few of my notes extracted as I read the book.

The author analyses the use of checklists in four domains of activity:

• Surgery
• Aircraft flying
• Financial investments
• (Real-estate) construction work
  … plus:
• hiring

… and shows how relevant data gathered before and after the use of checklists supports their meaningful contribution to better outcomes in all of the chosen domains.

Atul Gawande also reminds us of important questions in any field of work:

• How do you know someone has the right knowledge?
• How do you know if someone is applying the knowledge right?

Whilst there are elaborate ways of answering those two questions, this book is proposing a first step, simple solution, towards getting the best out of certain high risk, high tension, situation: checklists.

• Checklists improve outcome with no increase in skill.

The perceived simplicity of this tool (the checklist itself) is also what makes it hard to adopt for certain persons. The culprit?

• Ego. Certain persons feel that by using a checklist, their intelligence is insulted. Even more so if they are an expert in a field, they should surely know everything and how to apply it in every and any situation. And they should be the go-to person for any question.
• Ego + lack of communication. Mandating use of checklists without consulting with the persons who are going to use them makes them resistant to using them.

The book also contains reminders of what the expectations for professionalism are:

• Selflessness
• Aim for excellence in our knowledge and expertise
• Trustworthiness
• Discipline

By the end of the book, one should hopefully see how checklists support the above four qualities of professionalism.

As simple as a checklist might look, it’s not that simple to write a good checklist.

I’ll use Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle to outline the first guiding questions for getting to a good checklist:

1. WHY are you thinking of a checklist?
2. HOW are you going to get to a checklist that people will use?
3. WHAT will the checklist be like?

How does this translate in a few more practical steps?

1)

• There is a problem somewhere, a pain point, and it happens because people forget to do/don’t know they have to do a certain thing.
• You think having a set of steps people can follow in tensed, high risk situations, would help avoid problems.

2)

• Observe the problem, understand it, describe it.
  • Is it a simple, complicated or complex problem? (inspired by Systems Theory)
  • Is it suitable for a DO & CONFIRM or READ & DO type of checklist?
  • At what times is the checklist needed?
• Experiment
  • Write up a checklist and send it out for people to try it
  • Collect feedback on how people use it
  • Adapt the list based on the feedback – remove, rephrase, add

3)

• Contains key elements that can have a great undesired impact if missed
  • Does not contain every little step and instruction
  • This leaves room for judgement and applying skills that people have relevant to that key element and subsequent bits. (This made me think of the concept of priming of ideas, a concept I’ve come across in Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow)
• To the point
  • Use specific language, including acronyms where they exist (gives example of aircraft procedure related checklists)
• Readable layout
  • Use capital letters to start checklist entry
  • Pay attention to the font (Helvetica is recommended)

Going back to activities that can make use of a checklist – the author mentions the work of PhD Geoff Smart (psychologist), who studied hiring processes and came up with a categorization of styles, measured their outcomes over time, and published the book Who on the subject.

Here is categorization of styles, as summarized by Atul Gawande:

• Art Critics – assess entrepreneurs almost at a glance
• Sponges – gather info
• Prosecutors – interrogate, use hypothetical situations
• Suitors – wooing more than evaluating
• Terminators – hire, fire, replace
• Airline Captains – checklists

The use of checklists in the hiring process proved to be most successful.
—

Here are a few examples of (my own understanding of) checklists I’ve created or use:
* Preparing release checklist
* Preparing a presentation checklist
* Stakeholder management checklist

Do you use any checklists for various activities that you must do?
How do they look?