Atul Gawande, a professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, makes the case that checklists can assist us in managing human fallibility. Dr. Gawande takes real world examples of checklists used in construction, medicine, and aviation to contend that short, straightforward checklist can greatly reduce the chances of failure.

My favorite example of a checklist comes from the commercial aviation when the engines fail during flight. The very first item on the checklist is “FLY THE PLANE.”

We all have mental checklists that we do on a daily basis, Dr. Gawande contends these checklists should be written down and followed to ensure important steps are not overlooked. The book is focused on the medical profession but useful in many industries.

Here’s the publishers description of the book: The modern world has given us stupendous know-how. Yet avoidable failures continue to plague us in health care, government, the law, the financial industry—in almost every realm of organized activity. And the reason is simple: the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people—consistently, correctly, safely. We train longer, specialize more, use ever-advancing technologies, and still we fail. Atul Gawande makes a compelling argument that we can do better, using the simplest of methods: the checklist. In riveting stories, he reveals what checklists can do, what they can’t, and how they could bring about striking improvements in a variety of fields, from medicine and disaster recovery to professions and businesses of all kinds. And the insights are making a difference. Already, a simple surgical checklist from the World Health Organization designed by following the ideas described here has been adopted in more than twenty countries as a standard for care and has been heralded as “the biggest clinical invention in thirty years” (The Independent).