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Top positive review
9 people found this helpful
4.0 out of 5 starsSurprisingly readable
ByRichard Bakeron February 6, 2017
I had to read this book for work, and I wasn't looking forward to it. To my surprise it has a very good narrative is quite readable. The examples used are compelling and keep the pages turning. By the end it had me thinking of our processes and I have my team scouring them looking for places where a checklist would be appropriate. If you're concerned about quality, you should give this book a try.
Top critical review
8 people found this helpful
1.0 out of 5 starsI actually checked this review off my To-Do list.
ByAnthony J. Veraon June 10, 2018
Meh. The book is WAY over-hyped!! It spends MOST of its long never-ending pages explaining medical scenarios. It's unbelievable....I felt as if I was studying my Paramedic book again! All that nonsense to get to "Checklists are good...you should develop one for everything you do". That's it folks...I just gave you the cliff Notes for the ENTIRE book! Even the sample checklists (all two of them) they illustrate are a joke.
Pay ME whatever this book costs, and I'll actually MAKE a checklist for you! Tell ya what...contact me if you want the book. I'll give it to you if you just pay shipping. Very disappointing!
Pay ME whatever this book costs, and I'll actually MAKE a checklist for you! Tell ya what...contact me if you want the book. I'll give it to you if you just pay shipping. Very disappointing!
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ByJohn M. Fordon February 7, 2013
Atul Gawande is a physician interested in improving surgical practice. He reviews surgical cases with disastrous outcomes that could have been prevented and cites research claiming that nearly half of deaths that occur in surgery are in fact preventable. We read a detailed analysis of a drowning accident in which the young victim's life was saved against all odds. Why? Because the hospital staff had discussed and practiced the procedures to treat cold-water drowning ahead of time. They used no new knowledge; they just coordinated and communicated more effectively.
Gawande examines how human beings do things. There are two reasons we fail at complex tasks. The first is ignorance. We correct it by conducting research and building schools to increase our knowledge. The second and more common reason for failure is ineptitude--the right knowledge is available, but we do not apply it correctly. People continually forget, are distracted, or skip steps because they seem unimportant. This problem lurks below the radar; we don't recognize it, let alone try to solve it. Instead we send people off for more training to increase their knowledge.
What is needed instead is a simple way to remind people of what they know at the right time to make a difference. We have an answer, we just aren't using it. "Checklists seem to provide protection against such failures. They remind us of the minimum necessary steps and make them explicit. They not only offer the possibility of verification, but also instill a kind of discipline of higher performance."
The author examines checklists used by airline pilots, building contractors, investors and other physicians. In these professions work has become too complex for even a talented individual to perform alone. Teams of skilled experts must manage both communication and complexity to succeed. They do both with checklists. These checklists make people stop and think at "pause points" to ensure that the right things have been done. They get coworkers to bond as a team by requiring them to talk to each other. As a result, people become comfortable enough to speak up when they see a potential problem.
Chapter Six, The Checklist Factory is the instructional meat of the book, with recommendations that help us develop good checklists. There are direct guidelines about brevity and clarity. There are also process guidelines about identifying common mistakes and fine-tuning a checklist with field testing. He distinguishes between READ-DO checklists, which march novices through the tightly specified steps of rote tasks, and DO-CONFIRM checklists, which provide checkpoints for experienced professionals solving complex problems in coordinated groups. Both have their place, but DO-CONFIRM checklists have the most potential to make a difference.
There are barriers to checklist use. They have a serious user acceptance problem. Many accomplished professionals consider themselves virtuosos who don't need help from other people at all, let alone somebody else's checklist. To many others checklists seem too mundane to make a difference. The author works hard to persuade us. His own research on checklists in operating rooms finds significant drops in death rates, post-operative infections, and other outcome measures. He highlights successes at prominent hospitals to encourage wider acceptance, asks administrators to impose requirements, and calls on nurses to help change the culture of the operating room. The idea is slowly catching on.
Gawande wishes we would move more quickly. "In the money business everyone looks for an edge. If someone is doing well, people pounce like starved hyenas to find out how. Almost every idea for making even slightly more money ... gets sucked up by the giant maw almost instantly. Every idea, that is except one: checklists."
I learned some things from this book and highly recommend it. Give it at least a quick look, starting with Chapter 6. It has the potential to make you even better at what you do best.
Gawande examines how human beings do things. There are two reasons we fail at complex tasks. The first is ignorance. We correct it by conducting research and building schools to increase our knowledge. The second and more common reason for failure is ineptitude--the right knowledge is available, but we do not apply it correctly. People continually forget, are distracted, or skip steps because they seem unimportant. This problem lurks below the radar; we don't recognize it, let alone try to solve it. Instead we send people off for more training to increase their knowledge.
What is needed instead is a simple way to remind people of what they know at the right time to make a difference. We have an answer, we just aren't using it. "Checklists seem to provide protection against such failures. They remind us of the minimum necessary steps and make them explicit. They not only offer the possibility of verification, but also instill a kind of discipline of higher performance."
The author examines checklists used by airline pilots, building contractors, investors and other physicians. In these professions work has become too complex for even a talented individual to perform alone. Teams of skilled experts must manage both communication and complexity to succeed. They do both with checklists. These checklists make people stop and think at "pause points" to ensure that the right things have been done. They get coworkers to bond as a team by requiring them to talk to each other. As a result, people become comfortable enough to speak up when they see a potential problem.
Chapter Six, The Checklist Factory is the instructional meat of the book, with recommendations that help us develop good checklists. There are direct guidelines about brevity and clarity. There are also process guidelines about identifying common mistakes and fine-tuning a checklist with field testing. He distinguishes between READ-DO checklists, which march novices through the tightly specified steps of rote tasks, and DO-CONFIRM checklists, which provide checkpoints for experienced professionals solving complex problems in coordinated groups. Both have their place, but DO-CONFIRM checklists have the most potential to make a difference.
There are barriers to checklist use. They have a serious user acceptance problem. Many accomplished professionals consider themselves virtuosos who don't need help from other people at all, let alone somebody else's checklist. To many others checklists seem too mundane to make a difference. The author works hard to persuade us. His own research on checklists in operating rooms finds significant drops in death rates, post-operative infections, and other outcome measures. He highlights successes at prominent hospitals to encourage wider acceptance, asks administrators to impose requirements, and calls on nurses to help change the culture of the operating room. The idea is slowly catching on.
Gawande wishes we would move more quickly. "In the money business everyone looks for an edge. If someone is doing well, people pounce like starved hyenas to find out how. Almost every idea for making even slightly more money ... gets sucked up by the giant maw almost instantly. Every idea, that is except one: checklists."
I learned some things from this book and highly recommend it. Give it at least a quick look, starting with Chapter 6. It has the potential to make you even better at what you do best.
4 people found this helpful
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ByAdamSmytheon January 24, 2010
I looked over the other reviews of this interesting book, and there are many of them that you will find very useful--so I'll just try to list some highlights. As Dr. Gawande points out, a checklist can't be too long (people won't use it), yet it must succinctly cover the most essential considerations of the situation at hand. Although what follows isn't a checklist, I'll try to focus on the most essential characteristics of Dr. Gawande's book:
First, this is an easy-to-read, engaging book. I'll bet that you will find it hard to put down. It is interesting enough to make you want to read the book and serious enough to deliver important messages.
Second, the value of using checklists springs directly from the complexity of modern life, whether we're talking about surgery (the author is a surgeon), flying an airplane or building a skyscraper. By the way, in reading this book I have developed a newfound appreciation of how complex the construction business can be.
Third, checklists are not just for simple, straightforward tasks. Checklists help people communicate and work together better, especially when the unexpected occurs.
Fourth, checklists are important regardless of the time available. Indeed, when the cockpit crew of US Airways flight 1549 lost both engines over New York City, they had only three minutes of airtime remaining. The first thing they did was to get out their checklists. (You can read Captain Sully Sullenberger's excellent book for more details.)
Fifth, checklist usage has saved numerous lives, including one of Dr. Gawande's patients. His candor in discussing that episode is laudable.
Sixth, humans being human, mistakes will inevitably occur. Checklist usage is important when the potential cost of human mistakes is great.
Seventh, the mere act of creating a checklist focuses the mind on the most important characteristics of our tasks.
Eighth, like anything else, it takes practice to produce and use checklists effectively.
Ninth, practice comes from commitment and personal discipline. Indeed, one of the most important things Sully Sullenberger did was to maintain his composure and discipline, even while the gravity of his situation must have been racing through his mind.
Tenth, as I read this book, my mind frequently reflected on how a checklist approach could be applied in some of the business and academic practices that I am familiar with. That's the real beauty of this book--it gets the reader thinking about ways to improve life.
First, this is an easy-to-read, engaging book. I'll bet that you will find it hard to put down. It is interesting enough to make you want to read the book and serious enough to deliver important messages.
Second, the value of using checklists springs directly from the complexity of modern life, whether we're talking about surgery (the author is a surgeon), flying an airplane or building a skyscraper. By the way, in reading this book I have developed a newfound appreciation of how complex the construction business can be.
Third, checklists are not just for simple, straightforward tasks. Checklists help people communicate and work together better, especially when the unexpected occurs.
Fourth, checklists are important regardless of the time available. Indeed, when the cockpit crew of US Airways flight 1549 lost both engines over New York City, they had only three minutes of airtime remaining. The first thing they did was to get out their checklists. (You can read Captain Sully Sullenberger's excellent book for more details.)
Fifth, checklist usage has saved numerous lives, including one of Dr. Gawande's patients. His candor in discussing that episode is laudable.
Sixth, humans being human, mistakes will inevitably occur. Checklist usage is important when the potential cost of human mistakes is great.
Seventh, the mere act of creating a checklist focuses the mind on the most important characteristics of our tasks.
Eighth, like anything else, it takes practice to produce and use checklists effectively.
Ninth, practice comes from commitment and personal discipline. Indeed, one of the most important things Sully Sullenberger did was to maintain his composure and discipline, even while the gravity of his situation must have been racing through his mind.
Tenth, as I read this book, my mind frequently reflected on how a checklist approach could be applied in some of the business and academic practices that I am familiar with. That's the real beauty of this book--it gets the reader thinking about ways to improve life.
ByVincent Poirieron March 31, 2012
A well designed checklist does two things. First it keeps a team from missing vital but routine tasks, tasks that are so important that one assumes they have been already carried out. When everyone thinks someone must have done something already, it's easy to imagine that this something could have been forgotten!
A second purpose of checklists is to build a team spirit. By assigning the checklist to a specific person and having different tasks verified by different members of the team, the resulting communications invariably lead to more information being shared among the entire team.
What makes the book great is the emphasis it places on the importance of designing the checklist. Even experts will need several attempts before they get their checklist right. Further, proven and tested checklists are not static boilerplate templates. Each organization needs to tweak its checklists to fit its culture. Checklist are not exhaustive itemized procedures.
Some people complain the book is padded while others complain that it is too narrow. It is neither.
It's about the importance and benefits of checklists in general, it's about how they first appeared in aviation before spreading to other fields, and it's about the difficulty of getting them accepted by the people who should use them.
Gawande says a lot in a short space; any reader will get his full message in the two hours it takes to read the book. Hardly the stuff of padding.
Nor is the book focused on the medical industry. Because the author is a surgeon, he naturally illustrates his general idea with examples from medecine. Given the egos doctors have and the importance of meticulousness in surgery, this make medecine a particularly good field from which to illustrate the contribution checklists can make and the difficulties of getting them accepted.
So what if Gawande doesn't mention other industries? Mentioning white asparagus farming or fashion accessory retail businesses for female motorcyclists would have weighed the book down. Now THAT would have been padding.
Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
A second purpose of checklists is to build a team spirit. By assigning the checklist to a specific person and having different tasks verified by different members of the team, the resulting communications invariably lead to more information being shared among the entire team.
What makes the book great is the emphasis it places on the importance of designing the checklist. Even experts will need several attempts before they get their checklist right. Further, proven and tested checklists are not static boilerplate templates. Each organization needs to tweak its checklists to fit its culture. Checklist are not exhaustive itemized procedures.
Some people complain the book is padded while others complain that it is too narrow. It is neither.
It's about the importance and benefits of checklists in general, it's about how they first appeared in aviation before spreading to other fields, and it's about the difficulty of getting them accepted by the people who should use them.
Gawande says a lot in a short space; any reader will get his full message in the two hours it takes to read the book. Hardly the stuff of padding.
Nor is the book focused on the medical industry. Because the author is a surgeon, he naturally illustrates his general idea with examples from medecine. Given the egos doctors have and the importance of meticulousness in surgery, this make medecine a particularly good field from which to illustrate the contribution checklists can make and the difficulties of getting them accepted.
So what if Gawande doesn't mention other industries? Mentioning white asparagus farming or fashion accessory retail businesses for female motorcyclists would have weighed the book down. Now THAT would have been padding.
Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
ByDougon December 28, 2014
Checklist Manifesto reads like a very good long form blog post that got stretched into a book. I bought the book having sparked to Atul's premise that "Checklists" might be an under utilized tool for business and was interested in learning how to put it to use in my field. The disappointment with this book stems from the fact Atul spends the entire book recounting stories across the medical, construction, and aviation industries to illuminate why checklists are critical to these fields. He is an excellent writer and the stories are well explored but he belabors the point. One chapter on the importance of checklists would be enough for readers who paid to read about checklists. Would have preferred more in depth about how to create checklists in an industry agnostic manner. If you are interested in detailed stories about commercial construction & surgical process definitely read and enjoy. If you are looking for more detailed "how to" on creating checklists for your work you may want to just search for the example templates he includes at the end of the book.
ByJennifer Henczelon February 3, 2016
Every business owner, entrepreneur, and non-profit director should own this book. Every staff member should have a copy, as well. I have recommended to every one of my students and members since it was released. This book provides the foundation for all other activities in an organization. It goes beyond documentation and standard operating procedures, to explain the importance of what it takes to really move an organization and our efforts in society to the next level. Having checklists in place helps us to better help others. Gawande brings life to this topic with fascinating stories and research that support his ideas.
ByDavid J. Pratton December 5, 2016
This book brings the art of productivity into very useful and practical understanding. I especially love the instruction on how to build your own checklist and the reminder to keep it simple. Also important, don't expect perfection. Constantly strive to improve on your forms. Applying already tested management to the medical field was brilliant, but as Atul points out, the form, function, and importance of checklists fit within all trades and business models.
5.0 out of 5 starsA book that explains being flexible can only be managed after taking care of the basics.
ByAmazon Customeron July 29, 2018
Just read it. It won't take you long and I found it to be one of the few business related books that I couldn't put down. I think this book should be a mandatory read for every industry no matter what you do. You may not work in a life or death industry but that doesn't put you above the need for a checklist. With so many books like How Google Works and Team of Teams encouraging us to be flexible not rigid I feel like we are shunning the need for the basics. The author conveys that if we ensure the basics have been managed our brains are free to more easily handle the unexpected or perhaps prevent it.
ByAndy Shorton February 20, 2010
This book piqued my interest, as checklists are common in my profession. As a person in the restaurant business, our daily tasks are driven by completing checklists. I was hoping to glean some insight in how to get people to actually use the checklist on a consistent basis or how to improve checklist design. Instead, the two main points of the book were - use checklists and communicate with the team. This maybe a startling relevation to the medical community, but it has been common practice in the restaurant business over my twenty years in the industry. The book is well written and has an engaging story line about the development of the WHO checklist to reduce surgery mortality.
What suprised me the most is that apparently using a checklist to reproduce a successful environment has not been common practice in the medical profession. I would advocate that those in the healthcare industry read this book and take the lessons to heart. I will certainly be thinking of this book next time I visit a hospital! If you already use checklists in your daily job, get this book if you want a good story, but do not expect it to add to your sum total knowledge on checklist design and execution.
What suprised me the most is that apparently using a checklist to reproduce a successful environment has not been common practice in the medical profession. I would advocate that those in the healthcare industry read this book and take the lessons to heart. I will certainly be thinking of this book next time I visit a hospital! If you already use checklists in your daily job, get this book if you want a good story, but do not expect it to add to your sum total knowledge on checklist design and execution.
ByChristopher D. Abreyon June 5, 2018
Just finished reading this book, was so riveted I couldn't put it down, fastest I have ever read a book. Very easy read and great examples of how checklists can be utilized in any business
ByMAURICE J RUBINOon July 15, 2015
The vast amount of knowledge the human race has acquired and the pace the knowledge base keeps increasing emphasizes the need to work together as a team and the use of checklists is the glue to hold a team together. Dr. Gawande's book uses real world examples from several different types of work to make this point. Read this book and checklists will also become an important part of your business as well.
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