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The Checklist Manifesto
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Posted by Andy Brice
May 6, 2019 at 01:42 PM
nathanb wrote:
>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.
Interesting. There has been talk recently about the proliferation of ‘bullshit jobs’ that don’t really contribute to society in any meaningful way. We should perhaps we equally worried when the bullshit starts penetrating into real jobs.
But, having been able to watch some builders at work from my hotel window in Malta, some health and safety is definitely a good thing!
—
Andy Brice
https://www.hyperplan.com
Posted by washere
May 6, 2019 at 05:56 PM
https://focusmanifesto.s3.amazonaws.com/FocusFree.pdf
Posted by nathanb
May 6, 2019 at 08:01 PM
Andy Brice wrote:
>
>Interesting. There has been talk recently about the proliferation of
>‘bullshit jobs’ that don’t really contribute to society in any
>meaningful way. We should perhaps we equally worried when the bullshit
>starts penetrating into real jobs.
>
>But, having been able to watch some builders at work from my hotel
>window in Malta, some health and safety is definitely a good thing!
>
>—
>
>Andy Brice
>https://www.hyperplan.com
It’s actually a good problem to have, historically speaking. We’ve captured most of the productivity and safety low-hanging fruit where things are far safer than they ever used to be. But as complexity has increased (to be able to achieve high safety and quality rates) the same strategies that got us there (following simple checklists) are no longer as effective and often detrimental. So we are experiencing a plateau of progress, especially in the construction industry, because we still don’t manage beyond the checklist.
Posted by washere
May 7, 2019 at 03:39 AM
OMG this topic is going to go on forever too I guess as it’s not clear what the actual debate is about as with many other threads which rambles off topic into a myriad of sideways. This is like the nurture-nature debate, no end in sight.
Except to be precise, here it’s Top-down (checklist) vs bottom-up (flexible). Endless and pointless debate. Horses for courses. The actual topic though is about the Top-down checklist approach. More Minsky than Von Neumann.
Posted by MadaboutDana
May 7, 2019 at 08:08 AM
Well, I think it’s a valuable debate, simply because we’re all interested in cognitive processes, and the impact of e.g. checklists (not to mention other forms of neurocerebral assistance, including e.g. hallucinogenics) on cognitive processes is still being (re)discovered. Take, for example, this recent statistic (reported in FutureCrunch, a genuinely wonderful palliative for all the horrendous goings-on reported in the mainstream media):
“Deaths after surgery in Scotland have dropped by more than a third since 2008, thanks to the use of a safety checklist. Sometimes, the solutions are simple.”
And here’s the actual report: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-47953541
Cheers!
Bill