Read December 2016 / January 2017
Takeaways
Our modern world has grown so complex that we can no longer reasonably expect individuals to consistently and accurately navigate specialized procedures with their memory and conscious awareness alone (and we expect them to at our peril). However, industries including medicine, aviation, and construction have implemented simple checklists. These simple tools can have drastic results when it comes to ensuring that steps are not overlooked and that performance and quality are consistent.
A good checklist should have the following qualities:
- they should be designed to be used at natural pause-points in the process
- <10 items per list is ideal, and the list should fit on a single page
- the checks should come at a time that corrective action is still possible
- wording should be simple and exact
- the items being checked should be important, but possible to overlook
- checks should include both actions that need to be taken, and communication that needs to be… communicated
- the list should be tested in the real world and revised
Vocab
- Lilt: A cadence or tonal rise/fall in speech (“lilting voice”)
- Brogue: A leather shoe with an ornamental pattern (of perforations)
- Vertiginous: causing or related to vertigo
- Taylorized: Named after Frederick Winslow Taylor, author of The Principles of Scientific Management. Seems to have to do with industrializing and standardizing a process, possibly with the implication that some amount of human touch has been lost.
- Sanguine - Optimistic or positive, especially in an apparently bad or difficult situation
- Cockamamie - ridiculous, implausible
- Laporoscopic (surgery) - aka Minimally Invasive Surgery, bandaid surgery, or keyhole surgery, is a modern surgical technique in which operations are performed far from their location through small incisions (usually 0.5â1.5 cm) elsewhere in the body. Usually CO2 is insufflated into the region to provide a working space, because CO2 is non-flammable and can easily be absorbed and purged from the body via respiration
- Jug-eared - having protuberant ears
- (Protuberant - protruding, bulging)
- Parquet - the ground floor of a theate or auditorium, or flooring composed of wooden blocks arranged in a geometric pattern
- Bluff - direct in speech or behavior, but in a good-natured way
- Lodestar - a star used to guide the course of a ship (Polaris for most of us)
- Vicissitude - a change of circumstances or fortune (usually for the worse)
- Bereft - deprived or lacking something (especially a nonmaterial asset)
- Disarthria - an inability to speak
- dun-colored: Grey-gold or tan. Originates from a description of a horse gene.
- Sot: a habitual drunkard