The strategy is a checklist
By Ricky Lyons in : Culture Thoughts // Jul 19 2010
We are in the real estate development business where checklists are critical to our contractors, to our lenders, and in several processes we organize on a daily basis. Prior to reading Gawandi’s book The Checklist Manifesto – How to Get Things Right (www.henryholt.com], I did not understand how important the checklist was.
Gawandi says, “we have accumulated stupendous know how. We have put it in the hands of some of the most highly-trained, highly-skilled and hardworking people in our society, and with it, they have indeed accomplished extraordinary things. Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention, demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields – from medicine to finance, business to government.”
In his book, he sets out a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have. It somehow makes up for our inevitable human inaccuracies.
The strategy is a checklist.
Gawandi uses several examples, but the most recent and striking example in recent memory is the landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. Captain Sullenberger must have followed a series of checklists that had become innate to him to safely land that plane.
One caution however, the bigger the checklist does not necessarily make it better. Often it is the things we assume to be habitual that are ignored.
Related posts:
Recommended Reading
Project Images
