I must admit I was surprised by this book. I have quite a bit of time to listen to audio books and not nearly as much time to actually read, so I decided to give this one a try on audio even though I thought it would be a much better read. As it turns out, it makes for quite a nice audio book. This book is not about the nitty gritty of checklists and how to create them or whatever. Instead, it’s written by a surgeon and how and why he implemented it into his practice as well as working with the World Health Organization to get it implemented much more widely.
To put it simply, Checklists work. At least, they work if they’re formatted right for the goal they are trying to help accomplish. Engineers working on a building project might have an extremely detailed checklist that they slog through over the course of months or years to help safely and effectively build a building. Meanwhile, a Surgeon needs his checklist to be very brief. It should only check for the things it absolutely needs and are often missed. Things like making sure the patient gets his antibiotic within an hour before the surgery. Those little things that are so easy to overlook, but can be crucial.
The book itself talks through the process of how the author, Atul Gawande, came to use checklists. There are plenty of anecdotal stories in the book which made for good listening and then some relatively quick mentions of statistics that backed up the stories with success rates of using checklists. One function of the checklists in his book was actually to improve teamwork. The checklists themselves forced people to communicate better together in a team environment and helped create better teamwork overall.
The book doesn’t get too technical on checklists. The only spot that really seemed technical at all was when the author mentioned Do-Confirm versus Read-Do checklists. In Do-Confirm, you go through the process until you come to a defined pause point and then make sure you did the things. In a Read-Do, you read off each step along the way and perform the step, checking it off as you go. The situation should determine which type you use.
The author mostly focuses on surgery, which is his specialty, but also gets into engineering, aviation (where it really popularized), and even finance.
I don’t think this book will drastically change my life since I was already on board. I already use To-Do lists and Task lists extensively in my life, but I will look for more places to add these lists as he did indeed make a convincing case that they are valuable. Our world is simply too complex to rely on memory and habit alone, getting the process down to a list and following it will prevent many errors. If you don’t use checklists in your life, I’d recommend giving this book a try and see if it convinces you.