A short podcast episode by Brian Johnson (Arete +1° #190) promoting the use of simple checklists to improve performance and reduce errors, drawing on Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto and Teresa Amabile’s citation of its results. Johnson presents a brief “Masterpiece Day” checklist exercise (identify your top 3 practices), cites research that surgical complications fell 36% and deaths fell 47% after a checklist trial, and promotes his book Arete: Activate Your Heroic Potential with specific pre-order incentives and launch details.
Questions this episode answers
47%
36%
Three months in eight different hospitals
November 14th
November 10th through 12th in Austin
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Arete One Degree, a micro chapter from my new book, Arete Activate youe heroic potential. 451 Little micro chapters like this. This is from Objective 4, making today a masterpiece. Second chapter, Masterpiece Day Checklist how to reduce mortality rates by 47%. Atul Gawande is a world class surgeon. In his great book, the Checklist Manifesto, he walks us through the astonishing power of simple checklists. I got the book after reading Teresa Amabile's great book, the Progress Principle, in which she raved about it. Professor Amabule is the head of research at Harvard Business School. She says, and I quote her, the results are astonishing. In a three month experiment in eight different hospitals around the world, the rate of serious complications for surgical patients fell by 36% after introduction of the checklist. And deaths fell by 47%. Even Gawande, himself, a highly trained surgeon with years of operating experience, found that his own performance improved notably after he started using the checklist. His point is that surgery, like any complex task, requires a regular check of all the fundamentals to liberate the team, to focus on the work and any unexpected circumstances that may arise. Now, the surgical checklist was crazy simple. So simple that many surgeons who trained for decades to do what they do thought it was laughably useless. It included very basic things, like each member of the surgical team introducing themselves, confirming which side of the body the surgery would be performed on. But the results from that super simple checklist were astonishing. Deaths fell by 47%. I repeat this time in bold caps to make sure you don't miss the memo. After using checklists, mortality rates fell by 47%. The research is clear. You can and should use checklists for any complex thing you do that you want to make sure you consistently do well, whether you're a surgeon, a pilot, or a hero on a quest to create a masterpiece Life. Here's the short story on a good checklist. It's short, it's precise, and most importantly, it's super practical for our heroic purposes. We want to make sure we have a simple little checklist to reduce the fatality rate of our masterpiece days. So what's on your list? Let's create a super simple V1 Masterpiece Day checklist right now. Short, precise, practical. What three things do you do when you have your best days? Think about that for a moment. What are they? Number one, two, three. Figure out the few super basic things you do to help you have great days. Create a checklist to make sure you do them. And make today a masterpiece. P.S. we architected our Heroic app with this wisdom in mind. Set up your Heroic Big 3 checklist protocol today and watch your masterpiece day mortality rates drop by at least 47%. I hope you enjoyed that. Arete one degree from my new book Arete activate your heroic potential. The book will be shipped on November 14th right before black Friday in time to make it the perfect holiday gift perhaps. I wanted to let you know that we have some special giveaways if you think you might like to pre order the book, and even more goodies if you think you might want to give the book away this holiday season. Here's the deal. Pre order one copy and get a free Advanced reader copy of the ebook today. Pre order three copies and get a free advanced copy of the ebook and the audiobook and a limited edition Arete Coin that we'll send to you. Pre order 10 copies of the book. Bless you and get all of that plus and an autographed advanced Hardcover reader copy sent to you immediately inside the fancy Arete VIP box, which is packed with other goodies including this Arete T shirt, a Heroic t shirt and 10 free annual heroic memberships for your gift recipients. You'd be able to give them a book and a year's worth of Heroic for free. If you pre order 25 copies, you'll get all that plus a free ticket to our launch event party in Austin November 10th through 12th. And you'll get a personal voice memo. Thank you and a high five from me if you're feeling inspired to order over 50 copies of the book. We've been blessed to have a lot of CEOs and corporations do that. We'll give you a huge discount. Just let us know all of this you can learn more about at Heroic Heroic Us Book. Of course you can order the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Independent bookstores will be everywhere you can buy a book, Hudson's airport stores, etc. And let us know of course when you've done that and purchased a copy or three or ten or more if you feel inspired to do so at Heroic Us Book. I appreciate you and I hope you love the book. I'm super excited about it, super proud of it, and I hope it helps you and your families transform your lives.
