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The Checklist Manifesto
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Posted by Jeffery Smith
Apr 23, 2019 at 07:16 PM
I’m in the first 20% of a book entitled “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande. So far, it seems to be quite anecdotal about the prudence of keeping checklists for very important sequences of tasks. He is an MD, so it is unabashedly medical. But I’ve watched enough “air disaster” documentaries to know that not extending flaps ins a no-brainer mistake that happens too frequently.
This book, along with my Bullet Journaling, will probably lead me to some sort of hybrid between an analog bullet journal and a Mac outliner app.
Posted by washere
Apr 23, 2019 at 11:47 PM
I read ii several years ago after listening to a long interview on radio. IIRC he generalized somewhat too much about the rules he extrapolated which might work for consultant surgeons or pilots but maybe not where broad creative analyses and problem solving and overall flexibility is needed which is most situations, thinking on your toes as in most cases. Nevertheless it was a hit book back then even before I found out about it.
However he is sort of genuine and not a serial trendy book author. Unlike the guy below whose latest hip book, elastic: flexible thinking iatoc, is in sort of opposition to checklist manifesto, he over generalizes even more:
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Mlodinow
Posted by NickG
Apr 24, 2019 at 06:11 AM
I’ve also read it. Its target is avoidance of error rather than productivity or time management, although there are some crossovers. In my work as a project manager, I’ve found checklists hugely helpful to team working under pressure.
The author is a serious medical practitioner himself and has pushed the use of checklists in hospitals with significant success - the statistics on deaths and disabilities because of mistakes or forgetfulness are disheartening.
About 5 years ago, he gave a series of Reith lectures* on the future of medicine which were interesting and eye-opening. They’re still available to listen to here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04bsgqn/episodes/player
*The Reith lectures are an annual series of (usually) 4 to 6 lectures sponsored by the BBC in the UK. They’re always deeply interesting. Named for Lord Reith, first director general of the BBC.
Posted by nathanb
May 3, 2019 at 06:09 PM
This is a deceptively deep topic. Checklists are inherently dead simple concepts but knowing when and how to apply them is really complex. I did enjoy that book and it’s a great primer on why checklists in certain contexts are important.
I’m an Industrial Engineer and have worked in several manufacturing industries. In this world, we have way too many checklists (and information in general) and not enough context on which ones are important and companies ‘fix’ that by adding meta checklists. You’d think that we’d get better at it as digital tools get better, but in a 20 year career, I’ve seen the opposite. We have better tools and metadata horsepower than ever but the increase information noise tends to outpace our ability to keep it under control. I strongly believe that this is the next wave of productivity gains after basic industrialization, actually leverage data we are now drowning in.
Here’s a typical example of checklist hell:
I’m a maintenance engineer writing a work order to do preventive maintenance on a pump. It might look like this:
First few steps are always boiler-plate, company policy stuff:
1. Notify all a affected personnel and get all applicable permits for this work…. one example of this may be that you need a ‘hot work’ permit which is a whole separate checklist that contains it’s own ‘boiler plate blah blahs’ about applicable permits and lockout procedures, then about 20 checks intended to account for any possible special conditions no matter how unlikely they are to occur.
2. Lock out the equipment following all applicable lockout/tagout procedures…...which explicitly or implicitly refers to another separate checklist (likely authored by the safety department with different list standards) which is probably a general site-level checklist and MAYBE specific machine level instructions about this piece of equipment.
Then actual work:
3. Follow manufacturer’s steps for the 6-month maintenance plan. This refers to the ‘attached’ manual pages that are a another separate checklist…. at least half of which is the same boiler plate general safety and permit checks in addition to a bunch of superfluous checks put there in response to isolated fluke incidents and mostly cover common sense. But as a maintenance engineer, who are you to decide which of these 30 ‘OEM recommended’ steps aren’t important?
4. Follow company specific checklist for that kind of equipment. Like what materials to use or not use based on the particular chemicals we make (blah blah).
If you need special tools or equipment:
5. Forklift- be sure to complete the daily operational checklist which is like 3 important things like ‘are the f’ing wheels on’ along with random crap like ‘are their any cracks in the tail lights’ because the company’s safety directive is to ensure all equipment is in good condition at all times. And don’t confuse this list with the weekly/monthly equipment checklists which are made up of redundant tasks and checks).
6. If you need to do any ‘elevated work’....defined by…yes another checklist… you better go through the condition checklist for that which is a special OSHA audit category and therefore must be kept in it’s own separate ‘checklist hell’ in case we get audited.
Finish and document the work and turn back over to operations.
7. The maintenance planner has a checklist to make sure the work was done safely. Operations management has to sign off on the same slightly different ‘was this done correctly and is it operating good now’ checklist which of course has it’s own redundancies.
I’ve personally witnessed a situation where there were so many safety checks to drive ‘incidents to zero’ that the joke was it takes 26 signatures to cut a pipe… and a welder still died because a pretty basic safety check “are oxygen levels low in this enclosed space” was skipped….like 12 times for that particular procedure that day.
We are well past the point where a mechanic couldn’t possibly check all the things that all these departments have, in good faith, added to various checklists over the years and still manage to get any actual work done. Yet, when something goes wrong, this nest of redundant bullshit is picked apart so that the company can shift the blame to someone who “didn’t follow the procedures”.
Of course we have the tools to solve this problem, there are plenty of ‘smart’ checklist tools out there and I do my best to apply them when possible. But it’s almost always a wasted effort if 98% of the rest of the organization can’t comprehend digital information flow beyond the paper concept. And until that changes, we remain in checklist hell.
Writing an effective, useful checklist for others is really hard in a vacuum and nearly impossible when nested among other related checklists. Those very few of us who are good at it (I’m NOT) aren’t getting paid or recognized nearly enough.
Posted by Andy Brice
May 6, 2019 at 01:37 PM
As a developer I try to automate processes where I can. But where this isn’t practical I create a checklist. So I have checklists for: new product version release, newsletter etc. The checklists have saved me a lot of embarassing and time-consuming mistakes over the years.
—
Andy Brice
https://www.hyperplan.com