The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
- The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
Product Description
The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist
We live in a world of fantastic and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies—neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to glide aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third.
In riveting tales, Gawande takes us from Austria, where an emergency checklist saved a drowning victim who had spent half an hour underwater, to Michigan, where a cleanliness checklist in intensive care units virtually eliminated a type of deadly hospital infection. He clarifies how checklists really work to prompt striking and immediate improvements. And he follows the checklist revolution into fields well beyond medicine, from disaster response to investment banking, skyscraper construction, and businesses of all kinds.
An intellectual adventure in which lives are lost and saved and one simple thought makes a tremendous difference, The Checklist Manifesto is essential reading for anyone working to get things right.
Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best Books of the Month, December 2009: With a title like The Checklist Manifesto, it would be natural to expect that Atul Gawande is bent on revolutionizing that most loved-despised activity of workers the world over: the to-do list. But it’s not the list itself he wants to change; there are no programmatic steps or tables here to help you reshuffle daily tasks. What you’ll find instead is a remarkably liberating and persuasive inquiry into what it takes to work successfully and with a personal sense of satisfaction. The first thing you’ll realize is that it takes more than just one person to do a job well. This is a toppling revelation made all the more powerful by Gawande’s skillful blend of anecdote and practical wisdom as he profiles his own experience as a surgeon and seeks out a wide range of other professions to show that a team is only as strong as its checklist–by his definition, a way of organizing that empowers people at all levels to place their best knowledge to use, communicate at crucial points, and get things done. Like no other book before it, The Checklist Manifesto is at once a restorative call to action and a welcome voice of reason. –Anne Bartholomew Amazon Exclusive: Malcolm Gladwell Reviews The Checklist Manifesto
Malcolm Gladwell was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2005. He is most recently the author of What the Dog Saw (a collection of his writing from The New Yorker) as well as the New York Times bestsellers Outliers, The Tipping Point, and Blink. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Checklist Manifesto:
Over the past decade, through his writing in The New Yorker magazine and his books Complications and Better, Atul Gawande has made a name for himself as a writer of exquisitely crafted meditations on the problems and challenges of modern medicine. His latest book, The Checklist Manifesto, starts on familiar ground, with his experiences as a surgeon. But before long it becomes clear that he is really interested in a problem that afflicts virtually every aspect of the modern world–and that is how professionals deal with the increasing complexity of their responsibilities. It has been years since I read a book so powerful and so thought-provoking.
Gawande starts by making a distinction between errors of ignorance (mistakes we make because we don’t know enough), and errors of ineptitude (mistakes we made because we don’t make proper use of what we know). Failure in the modern world, he writes, is really about the second of these errors, and he walks us through a series of examples from medicine showing how the routine tasks of surgeons have now become so incredibly complicated that mistakes of one kind or another are virtually inevitable: it’s just too simple for an otherwise competent doctor to miss a step, or forget to question a key question or, in the stress and pressure of the moment, to fail to plot properly for every eventuality. Gawande then visits with pilots and the people who build skyscrapers and comes back with a solution. Experts need checklists–literally–written guides that walk them through the key steps in any complex procedure. In the last section of the book, Gawande shows how his research team has taken this thought, developed a safe surgery checklist, and applied it around the world, with staggering success.
The danger, in a review as small as this, is that it makes Gawande’s book seem narrow in focus or prosaic in its conclusions. It is neither. Gawande is a gorgeous writer and storyteller, and the aims of this book are ambitious. Gawande thinks that the modern world requires us to revisit what we mean by expertise: that experts need help, and that progress depends on experts having the humility to concede that they need help. –Malcolm Gladwell
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
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I have read both of Gawande’s previous books and this book did not disappoint. Gawande takes us on a ride to learn how knowledge has both saved and burdened us. It is certainly a book to read!
Rating: 5 / 5
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Obviously I’m not a part of the hit parade for this title. I had very high hopes when I ordered it from Amazon. I hoped to buy copies for each of the family life educators in my organization. The book’s basic thought is fantastic and has face appeal. Unfortunately, the book has an amazingly narrow focus. If you work in a hospital, I would recommend it. But if you want an application of the thought to your life at home or at work, you won’t find any useful thoughts in this book. Sure, we can ponder its possible application, but the author never takes the time to help readers know how to make and use checklists in their own lives. Half-way through the book I started frantic page turning to see if I could find something relevant to anything other than nurses and doctors. Sadly, I was surprised to find nothing directly useful at any point. So if you are in med school, I’d make it required reading. If you want to be horrified by mistakes by hospital workers who fail to use this vital method, you will be enlightened. Anyone else, your mileage will vary.
Rating: 1 / 5
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I was hoping a book on checklists would have one in it. It does not. The author has me convinced so Ok how to make an effect checklist. Surly the check list for making use I leave the house every morning with my wallet is different in some way then the checklist to build a space shuttle.
Rating: 3 / 5
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I found it a very compelling argument for simplifying and consistently executing in both your business and home life through the creation of checklist that are the solid foundation of essential communication.
(Unlike my run-on sentence above.)
Rating: 4 / 5
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This book takes what appear to be obvious truths– we fail because 1) we don’t know what we are supposed to do OR 2) we don’t do the things we know we should be doing… and gives us concrete methods that we can apply to make sure that we avoid those traps.
So many things in our current world are complicated and extremely hard to do perfectly again and again without making major mistakes. The Checklist Manifesto will give you the tools and paradigm that you need to succeed at complex tasks EVERY TIME.
Although the examples are often set in medical situations, it is a very excellent book for anyone who wants to improve their personal performance and excel in work and life…
Rating: 5 / 5
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