Here is my weekly post on what I have been reading or listening to.

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Book am I reading (Non Fiction)

The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right by Atul Gawande.

I finished this book on the weekend. It is a great read.

I reviewed the book and made more detailed observations in this post.

Favourite Highlight from the week?

“The fear people have about the idea of adherence to protocol is rigidity. They imagine mindless automatons, heads down in a checklist, incapable of looking out their windshield and coping with the real world in front of them. But what you find, when a checklist is well made, is exactly the opposite. The checklist gets the dumb stuff out of the way, the routines your brain shouldn’t have to occupy itself with (Are the elevator controls set? Did the patient get her antibiotics on time? Did the managers sell all their shares? Is everyone on the same page here?), and lets it rise above to focus on the hard stuff (Where should we land [the aeroplane]?).”

People Skills by Robert Bolton.

This book was recommended at the end of the Secrets of Consulting by Gerry Weinberg.

I am enjoying it. I can definitely learn from it. It is about communication and understanding. It is in many ways about perception. When I read the third quote below I knew this book was for me.

So far the book has discussed barriers to communication. The things we do consciously or not that get in the way of effective communication. There are twelve barriers he mentions, many of which are surprising.

I will break with my protocol and add a quote here form the book which is worth contemplating. This is a quote within a quote at the start of Chapter Two.

“A barrier to communication is something that keeps meanings from meeting. Meaning barriers exist between all people, making communication much more difficult than most people seem to realize. – Reuel Howe, theolgian and educator”

Continue reading “Handpicked: My Week of Learning” →

Here is my weekly post on what I have been reading or listening to.

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Book am I reading (Non Fiction)

The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right by Atul Gawande.

This book has been on my reading list for a while. A project I am on at the moment brought it to the fore again. How often do we over engineer a solution?

I have referred to checklists often in the last few years. I  have used them effectively in the past. Particularly with repetitive tasks.

Why would you want to figure out a set of steps again if you have done once before? Unnecessary effort, and you might miss a step.

The checklist also aids learning. Remembering what worked before and what didn’t. It helps make sure the same mistakes don’t happen again.

Checklists come in many different guises, from a task list, to standard operating procedures, to run books, and sometimes as far as a project plan.

More to come on this book .

Favourite Highlight from the week?

“Four generations after the first aviation checklists went into use, a lesson is emerging: checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized. They provide a kind of cognitive net. They catch mental flaws inherent in all of us—flaws of memory and attention and thoroughness. And because they do, they raise wide, unexpected possibilities.”

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Podcasts I Heard

Hidden Brain on NPR: How To Build A Better Job

“Why do you work? Are you just in it for the money or do you do it for a greater purpose? Popular wisdom says your answer depends on what your job is. But psychologist Amy Wrzesniewski at Yale University finds it may have more to do with how we think about our work. Across groups such as secretaries and custodians and computer programmers, Wrzesniewski finds people about equally split in whether they say they have a “job,” a “career” or a “calling.” This week on Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam talks with Wrzesniewski about how we find meaning and purpose at work.”

Continue reading “Handpicked: My Week of Learning” →