Summary: The Checklist Manifesto Atul Gawande

This work offers a summary of the book “The Checklist manifesto” by Atul Gawante. When solving problems, it's easy to get caught up in the complexities whilst ignoring the obvious, simple solutions. Atul Gawande suggests that every business sector can take some tips from the commercial aviation industry's emphasis on checklists: «Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields… the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure… And there is such a strategy — though it will seem almost ridiculous in its simplicity. It is a checklist.”

Atul Gawande has case studies in both arenas to demonstrate its brilliant commonsense. We have developed such sophisticated, complex systems, that we cannot prevent error by memory alone. Despite the growth of superspecialisation, steps are sometimes missed, which demonstrates that problems often exist not because of a lack of knowledge, but just because routine can create complacency. One especially compelling case is the construction industry, which by using checklists has reduced building failures to 0.00002 percent: given such statistics, why would any business not follow suit?