Saturday, May 28, 2022
The most important thing in a human relationship is communication, but people don't talk anymore. They read books, listen to podcasts, learn from youtube and gain knowledge, but they almost never talk.
There are a thousand ways things can go wrong even though you have cross checked a hundred possible factors that may lead to failure. We think of things as they are in our control. No matter how tech savvy we become, the mental and physical powers of our brain will always be limited. Some things in the world have never been - and will never be in our control. Although we have had successful realms - constructing a skyscraper, predicting snow storms, treating a cancer, yet, according to psychologists there are two cases where we may fail.
First is the ignorance - there are still some sky scrapers which we cannot build, snow storms we cannot predict, cancers that cannot be cured. The science has given us only a partial understanding of how the world works. Second is what they call ineptitude. Although we have the knowledge base, skyscrapers collapse due to engineering defects, meteorologists miss the signs of a snow storm, doctors fail to detect early symptoms of a cancer.
Know how & sophistications have increased remarkably across almost all our realms of endeavours, & as a result so as our ability to deliver them. Ignorance is easy to forgive, as we don't have the skill to solve a problem, credit is given based on the effort of the individual. However if the knowledge exists and still unavoidable accidents happen, it makes us infuriated. We have accumulated stupendous know-how & given it in the hand of extraordinary minds who have done a commendable job. However unavoidable accidents occur in glut and are persistent. The reason is evident, the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. Thus we need another strategy, a simple ridiculous one - A CHECKLIST.
We have been fooled about what we can expect from medicine - fooled, especially by Penicillin. Alexander Fleming invented Penicillin in 1928 and it completely changed the course of medication. It cured diseases which were incurable unit then. The discovery held out a beguiling vision of healthcare. A simple pill or injection was capable enough to cure not just one but many of the diseases.
Then why not a single injection can cure all the forms of cancer and other life threatening diseases?
Seems like medication didn't turn out as we had expected and went on a completely different tangent. According to the 9th report of WHO's international classification of diseases, there are more than 13 thousand different ways of how a body can fail. Medication now has become the art of managing extreme complexity - and a test of whether such complexity can be humanly mastered. Surgeons now have at their disposal some 6 thousand drugs which work on different bodies in completely different ways! According to a report the number of surgeries around the world have been increasing exponentially and quite a large number of complex surgeries result in the death of the patient.
Are the doctors not skilled enough to carry out a safe surgery?
Medication earlier required a one year degree and a few years of practice. It now requires 5 years of degree, 2-3 years of practice and another 2-3 years of study in their own specialization. Clearly it's not the skill set that is lacking.
Let's digress from medication and move to construction. How are the construction workers so sure of the skyscrapers they build? How do they ensure that the walls are straight and the electric, plumbing system is installed perfectly? All this is done through A CHECKLIST!
Do you know the procedure a pilot and the crew members go through before taking off from the runway? There are a series of checks that the pilot & the crew members go through before flying off! And this practice has averted hundreds of events that could have been catastrophic otherwise.
Whenever we think of a checklist, we imagine a sheet of paper with events to strike off or tick mark, This is a pre conceived notion most people have. A CHECKLIST does not have to be a sheet of paper to tick off the events. It should be more of a conversation between the people involved in that event.
Before performing the surgery - surgeon & others involved introduce themselves to each other as a part of the checklist. Result?
Adopting the checklist method plummeted the fatalities by 47% that occur because of surgeries. Checklists can be implemented in legit any field. A checklist can help you beat the market - that's how Warren Buffett does it!!
A point to be noted while making a checklist is to ensure that it is not long and time consuming. A checklist should only contain the points that a person is most likely to miss. And this comes from experimenting. First draft of a checklist cannot be the final draft. List down, experiment, learn from the failures and make the necessary changes. A checklist makes you disciplined, makes you subject to the procedure because the brain often tends to miss out on vital steps even though you know them on paper. Doctors started washing their hands before and after a surgery to bring down the fatality rate without improving the skill set. This is what a checklist does!
The most important thing in all human relationship is conversation, but people don't talk anymore! One of the major point in any checklist should be to ensure that those involved in the event communicate verbally. Doctors introduce themselves to each other before operating. Pilot and crew members introduce themselves to each other before flying the airplane. A research says that people in a team who know each other's name and in general know about each other, perform much better as compared to the traditional way of working - work without knowing each other.
In the most difficult of times, the power should move away from the centre to the periphery, giving majority of the people a room for discussion. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories.
This is what a good checklist looks like -
Short
Time efficient
Contains only the important points likely to be missed
Should be pragmatic
Avoid unnecessary colors
Keeps you organized
Precise and easy to use in difficult times
If you enjoyed reading today’s post, consider reading this book by Atul Gawande. You’ll love it.
See you next Saturday, until then have a great weekend :)
Cheers!
A FEW THINGS KEEPING ME AWAKE
Article: How To Name a Baby? by Tim Urban
Book I am reading: Fooled by Randomness by NNT
Song I am listening to: The Night
Thought of the week: "It’s a long road. Invest in your health. You attract more opportunities when you are high in energy."
MEME OF THE WEEK
SARCASTIC REFLECTION
Here are the last three posts if you were too occupied to read them -