The Monkey Shack

I've always teased my wife for how she makes her checklists on scratch paper each morning of the things she needs to get done that day. But I've never been able to argue with how much she is actually able to get done on that checklist. Now, according to a recent study led by Atul Gawande and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a checklist doesn't just help you get things done. It can save lives, too.

Among the findings of the study was a simple change in procedure in operating rooms, which asked people to introduce themselves and describe their function before an operation starts. That one step had a profound impact on the success rates of surgeries, and was one of 19 steps in a checklist adopted by surgical teams at eight hospitals. Over the course of the year the teams saw their death rates fall by 40% and their rate of complications by almost a third.

While the researchers weren't able to attribute the success to any one of the items on the checklist, they concluded that it was the behavioral changes occasioned by the checklist that improved the outcomes of the operations conducted by the team.

The implication, however, extends well beyond healthcare. It shows how a combination of relatively small changes in procedure can have a huge impact on the quality and success of any venture, either in business or in personal life.