Review of "Checklist Manifesto"

As usual when I read something that might have some practical implications for how we do our jobs, I pass along some of the basic ideas. This time, the book was “Checklist Manifesto.” It’s written by a doctor, so it’s mostly about taking the “checklist” systems prevalent in the construction and aviation industries and applying those concepts to the medical world. But there are implications for any organization.

The basic concept is that “the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably.” “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 philosophy is that you push the power of decision making out to the periphery and away from the center. You give people the room to adapt, based on their experience and expertise. All that you ask is that they talk to one another and take responsibility. That is what works.” “Under conditions of true complexity, efforts to dictate every step from the center will fail. Yet they cannot succeed as isolated individuals, either.” “Under conditions of complexity, not only are checklists a help, they are required for success. There must always be room for judgment, but judgment aided—and even enhanced—by procedure.”

“Good checklists are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps—the ones that even the highly skilled professional using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.” “The checklist cannot be lengthy. A rule of thumb some use is to keep it between five and nine items, which is the limit of working memory.” “The wording should be simple and exact and use the familiar language of the profession. Even the look of the checklist matters. Ideally, it should fit on one page. It should be free of clutter and unnecessary colors,” and so on.

“Discipline is hard. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail.” “We’re obsessed with great components, but pay little attention to how to make them fit together.” “We don’t study routine failures in teaching . . . or elsewhere.” “But we could, and that is the ultimate point.”

While it’s clearer how this theory might apply to the world of medicine where teams of people have to get on the same page quickly in order to make highly complex decisions with very few errors, I think there might be some application to our JBU context as well. Agendas for committees are one example of a checklist. Lesson plans are another. I’ll note a few other areas as food for thought. And in many (all?) of these cases, we at JBU probably already have some type of checklist process in place, so I’m mostly just suggesting refinements and/or making explicit the kinds of things academic institutions already do to some extent.

1) Our emergency preparedness committee could revise their procedures with more of this “checklist” mindset. I’m one of the people who is supposed to be “in the know” in some of these emergency situations, but I’m fairly clueless about what I’m supposed to do or where I’m supposed to get that information. That’s probably somewhat my fault, but if, as with airline pilots, I had both an electronic and paper back-up manual with these types of short, “key steps” checklists, that might help should a real emergency occur.

2) Our advising process, especially with the new ERP in place, could probably use some updating along these lines. Could we have, for instance, a list of the key 5 things that each advisor needs to check off with each student, perhaps with a physical (or virtual) “check” besides each box, before a student can actually register?

3) With more emphasis in our new evaluation process on having lots of documents put together (and put together well), could we develop a clearer checklist for people going through the process (what needs to be done when, by whom, how, etc.)? It might be a one-page document attached to the faculty evaluation document and distributed to everyone as a reminder when they go through the process.

4) Along similar lines, could we have a “key components” syllabi checklist created by people like Holly and Mandy that we ask all faculty to follow to make sure that whenever courses are created at JBU, they meet some basic institutional and pedagogical standards? That might help people with their PERC process as well.

5) What about with any student needing special support? I had a situation last year, for example, in which a parent had requested that we develop and implement a more detailed checklist for her child. There were some coordination issues between various offices and faculty members that such a system would have helped with.

6) So to with our retention efforts in general, perhaps in combination with points #2 and #5?

7) Going even broader, any of our “comparative decision making” systems might be improved by such efforts, such as in hiring and budgeting.

As I mentioned earlier, I think JBU has already got something like a checklist for many of these areas, but those checklists could probably be improved and made more explicit. The point is that just having a “mental” checklist often isn’t enough. And just having the information buried in handbooks and manuals isn’t enough. You need to have short, explicit checklists for some key components of any process in order to make sure that among the blizzard of information, people focus on the most important things.