alt Hacker NewsOn the other hand, I think this narrative also causes a lot of useless red tape. There might be some survivorship bias here.
Aviation, Doctors Without Borders, and SQLite have good checklists. Checklists are simple, so it's easy to think "oh I could do that too". But you never hear about the probably endless companies and organizations that employ worthless checklists that do nothing but waste people's time.
I wish there was more talk about what makes a checklist good or bad. I suspect it's kind of like mathematics where the good formulas look very simple but are very hard to discover without prior knowledge.
Replies
> But you never hear about the probably endless companies and organizations that employ worthless checklists that do nothing but waste people's time.
Most if not all the bad checklist I have encountered are all for the same reason, they were not tested or poorly written, and most of the time both.
Not tested in terms the checklist was written by somebody who doesn't actually know how to do the whole project. Unlike Professionals like Doctor ands Pilot where they are well trained and the check list are well understood to be a reminder. The rational behind it were taught and even if not professionals will question if something they dont understands while most other in there field could immediately give a detail answer.
Another example would be HR writing an on-boarding checklist. 99% of the time I have seen those check list are intended to make HR's life easier. Not the candidate or applicants.
Checklist is also a clear and distilled form of writing. And as the saying goes I dont have time to write you a short letter, but I have time for a long one. Writing short points with clarity takes a long time. And not a skill set everyone process. Nor do they have the time to do it when it is not part of their job or KPI.
WHO and Gawande emphasize iteration, that the draft is always wrong. They also claim good checklists are really coordination tools disguised as task lists.
I make checklists for myself and they're enormously helpful. Because my brain can't always remember every single little detail of every complex task every single time.
I've also seen checklists made by morons that are enormously unhelpful.
IMO it's paramount for whoever is making the checklist to have familiarity with the task at hand (both how to do it properly, and what steps people tend to miss or get wrong), investment (is this tool something you'd find indispensable for yourself if you were placed in the role of executing it?), a sense of pragmatism and conciseness.
The ability to recognize what things will be obvious or flow naturally from A to B helps eliminate redundant fluff. e.g. I train volunteer firefighters and in most canonical steps for calling a Mayday, one is basically "Tell the person on the other end what's wrong". You don't need a checklist item for that. When something goes seriously sideways and you need help, you will be very inclined to convey what is the matter.