checklists

This year my manager has been pushing our team more than ever to create and document processes and simplify their application as far as is possible. A notion I whole-heartedly agree with today, but in honesty this wasn't always my stance.

I was under the impression that an IT company hires competent and experienced employees so that they don't need to be told what to do and how, or why. I thought, "well if they are asking us to document how to do our jobs, does that mean we're going to loose them? Are we writing the documentation for someone less technical to come in behind us and make us redundant?" It was a naive and arrogant mindset. Naive in the sense that I was in no way an expert on the matter, but rather was projecting my insecurities onto it. And arrogant in the simple sense that I know how to do my job and therefore always did it correctly.

The reality of course is that there is nothing more valuable in any high-risk field than a checklist. They are not intended to replace the technicality or depth of knowledge required to fulfill a role. In the words of Atul Gawande (MD, MPH) of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, checklists are "tools to help make experts better." After watching his short but nevertheless inspirational TED talk on The Importance and Value of Checklists, my opinion took a complete 180 swing.

Say I was to complete a new process from start to finish and then write a checklist for it. The focus wouldn't be on making the process so simple that you could pull anyone in off the street and have them follow the checklist flawlessly. In Atul's example, the 'before takeoff' checklist used by pilots "isn't a recipe for how to fly a plane, it's a reminder of the key things that get forgotten." He remarks that the figures simply don't lie.

After implementing the use of checklists to teams of surgeons worldwide, they found that in the hospitals being trailed, surgical complications fell by 35% with death rates falling by 47%. This wasn't by using any new-fangled miracle drug, but a simple change to procedure. A simple step-by-step reminder of the tasks to be done which ultimately narrows the window for human error.

As far as I'm concerned, if its good enough for surgeons- it's good enough for me! Not only that, but I have started implementing checklists into my personal life and the time they save and margins for errors they reduce is phenomenal. For more, head over to my checklists page.

~ Aedan