The overall theme can be baked down to a single line: You’re better off with checklists. I wish the author had gone into more concrete arguments about why many fields are slow to cultivate this habit instead of simply diving into examples where it has worked. The fact that checklists work seems intuitive enough to not have to defend it over 150 pages, although the author repeatedly stunned me with the magnitude of improvement in each case and deserves a lot of credit for digging out the data driven results.
My biggest snag with this book is that the author never takes the time to define what exactly a checklist is, and yet devotes 200 pages on anecdotes where it has worked. Everything seems to loosely fit into what a checklist can be and everything from a chef’s recipe to a construction process diagram is categorized as a checklist. Therefore anything that gives a semblance of order is a checklist and everywhere it works or is the lynchpin of a complex system is a success story. With a definition this broad, it’d be surprising if it didn’t work.
I’d have preferred a case for checklists to be made taking into account their drawbacks – the loss of autonomy, culling of creativity (follow this recipe and nothing else), the plain banality and how mind-numbing it is etc. instead of relegating these into a single chapter in the end of the book. The writing is mediocre at best, and reads more like a blogger speaking about a system that brought order to his company instead of a bestselling author devoting as many pages to substantiate an idea. I’d recommend readers to look at some notes and summary for this book and save time (Sam T Davies has a good short post here that suffices, or you can check Graham’s post here for a longer play by play). My take on it – skip the book, read the notes and figure out how you can incorporate it in your day to day – another aspect the author happily skips.
Perplexed Potatoes 